Voodoo in Louisiana
by Rachel Beth Ahrens
Summary: La fille impossible- The Roaring 20s & prohibition have begun in New Orleans, but a teacher named Claire can't stop having nightmares about ghosts in the Bayou mist and two hostage Time Lords. With the help of her trumpet-playing lover and an old Scottish hermit John Smith, Claire unlocks her past as Clara Oswald. Jenny returns- think Frenchy meets Ginger Rogers, reviews welcome.
1. Prologue: Cocktail Dreams

_"A wise old owl lived in an oak  
The more he saw, the less he spoke  
The less he spoke, the more he heard.  
Why can't we all be like that wise old bird?"  
-password for the historic Owl Bar at the Belvedere Hotel, Baltimore City (Mount Vernon), Maryland  
Written April, 1875 _

_"Hell is empty… all devils are loose."  
–William Shakespeare, The Tempest_

_"This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful reflection, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician… Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result."  
__–Bill Evans in his liner notes from the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue, 1959 _

Dedicated to the real heroes in Baltimore City during the Freddie Gray protests, 20 minutes from my hometown, when this was in the writing process. "Just this once, everybody lives."

Also, for Delian, the the first boy who introduced me to the imaginary world inside the big blue box.

* * *

Prologue: Cocktail Dreams

New Orleans, Louisiana, January 1921

Another nightmare. The exact same one again. Night thirteen. She sat up straight in bed, her eyes flickering, heart pounding, and so out of breath she felt as if she ran too hard. She threw back the covers in a panic to cool the perspiration on her collar and back. She wore nearly next to nothing in her white silk nightie, her brown hair bobbed slightly longer than a flapper's, and her hazel eyes stinging from the previous day accompanied with a headache. She grazed the heel of her hand against her tan forehead and tightened her eyes closed, wincing in the sharp pain from the lit streetlamp glowing through her bedroom window. All was quiet. A little too quiet for her taste, since she loved hearing the sound of that same man playing saxophone outside on the corner every night after midnight. So she figured it must have been very early in the morning; the sky when she saw it had been dark as raven feathers.

Starting out of bed, she checked the peep hole of her apartment to see if anyone was coming. She padded the floor of her apartment, nobody home. Moving towards the kitchenette, she went to the hidden cabinet next to the Frigidaire and the ice box, and poured herself a glass of scotch. She devoured it in two gulps, wincing and sputtering from the burn as she swallowed, and proceeded to pour herself another. As a retired devoted practitioner of the law in the British and United States military during the War, she never liked to drink, but in the last two weeks she felt the urge to go against her better judgment. A glass of wine before bed or between siestas used to be her only friend in fighting off her night terrors until wine became harder to come by. She hated whiskey in every version, and she preferred a nice cup of tea rather, but for two weeks the tea had not been strong or kind enough to her in fending off her nocturnal subconscious demons.

The door opened and closed. In a near panic, she hid her glass and the scotch in the ice box behind her. She whirled around and gave a fake grin with her hands behind her back as a guilty child. She only began to relax when her dark toned secret love came into view. He wasn't supposed to see her, but despite the rules against combining black and white, she figured he'd said who the hell cares.

"What are you doing up so late, baby-face?" the dark man said in a low gravelly voice.

"I should ask you the same," she replied, flaunting her native English accent to tease him.

He approached her and placed his arms around her tiny waist. As he was about to kiss her hello, she added, "You know you're really not supposed to be here. You'll get caught."

Noticing the smell on her breath, he said, "You shouldn't be drinking this late either, not even at all for that matter, copper girl."

"I'm no copper," she said, condescending him. "I told you, I'm a teacher now."

"But you still work with the police, right babe?"

She put a finger to his lips. "Get over here and kiss me, dipper man."

He bent down and kissed her, cradling each other in their arms like they'd been apart for weeks. Though he had been away for nearly a whole day and part of a night, they kissed like they missed each other immensely, due to the laws of the South regarding their separation, both unmerited and unbearable.

Just before breaking their lip lock, he reached inside the ice box and fished for the bottle of scotch she had started on. As he shut the Frigidaire door, she pulled away from him, and seeing the bottle in his hand, she grimaced. "That's not mine," she said.

"Of course it ain't," he said. "But you know as well as I do that you hate this stuff. And you don't like drinking alone."

"What do you know?" she said, offended. "You're not even eighteen yet! You're lucky I'm only waiting until your next birthday so we can go live together somewhere so no one cares what we look like."

He put the bottle back on the counter and swept his hand across her face, pushing her hair behind her ear. "Baby, it's not gonna matter no more. I'm getting my big break, I just know it. I got a telegram from King Oliver himself saying he's coming here to N'oleans for my audition for his Creole band. We're doing a gig soon and if he likes me, he'll take me. After that, it'll be you and me. You, me, the world, and jazz, babe. I'm thinking we should celebrate my birthday early. You think?"

She took the bottle with her hand and looked over at the foyer across from her. No one would ever believe her, let alone anyone she knew would never approve of her living with a black musician. When she looked in his eyes then, she realized that no one really mattered anymore. She wanted to take it to the next level and she couldn't wait.

She gave a low growl that she knew he liked and said, "Fine. But we have to be quiet about it."

"You know me, baby," he replied. "I'm only here because I got back from a long night at the club, my lips are numb, and I'm tired. You don't mind if I crash here tonight?"

"Yeah, I figured you would," she said. "After all, it is after midnight."

"No it ain't," he said to correct her. "It's only after eleven."

"What?" She looked over at the clock on the wall across from the kitchenette and saw that it wasn't nearly midnight. The time was 11:25. She only slept for about an hour and a half or two before the nightmare came.

"Oh god," she exclaimed, leaving her lover behind to prop herself on the couch. She buried her head in her hands in embarrassment and pain prior to proceeding with drinking more liquor, in this case, taking swigs from the bottle.

Her man pulled the bottle away from her and sat down, putting the scotch as far away from her. He rubbed her back and asked, "Claire, what's the matter?"

Taking a short breath, Claire answered, "I can't tell you. You won't believe me."

"It's all right, baby. I'm your man, I'll believe you."

Her eyes welled with tears. "Even if there's nothing you can do to help me?" she said.

"Yes, honey, anything. Just tell me."

She took a couple of deep breaths and steadied herself before starting. "I had another nightmare tonight. I still can't go back to sleep because of it."

"Claire sweetheart, nightmares are just dreams with nasty demons. It's just a way you're trying to face your fears, a way to deal with things that make you scared or angry. You're only thinking of bad dreams and you know those ain't gonna happen for a long time. You've got me and we've got a plan. So what are you afraid of, baby?"

"I don't know…" Claire said. "It's just… sometimes I dream I'm not actually here, that I'm somewhere else… and someone else. And there's always another man with me, a very strange odd man, who's nothing like you, if you want to know. We don't date or anything, but we go on lots of adventures, him and me."

"Sounds like a good dream," her lover said with a big smile. He always had big smiles, for his face and his Big Dipper sized mouth were hard to forget. For a long while Claire hoped he would get his break into the big time, to become well known as the iconic jazz trumpet player with the big beautiful smile. He often told her he loved singing too, but she insisted he'd keep practicing so his voice didn't sound so much like someone with a sore throat. Still, she didn't mind his beautiful face or his voice, and she thought him handsome for a young teenager looking forward to a bright future. Although sometimes, she thought she saw his face before at some point; she just couldn't place the time.

Upon mentioning that what she described was a good dream, she said, "It's a gray area, actually. It starts off nice where the two of us are walking somewhere and taking in different things, then something goes wrong. And we start running. I don't know why we're running, but we are. And he calls me something else, some name that isn't mine. He keeps calling out to me, but in the end I don't answer because I fall to the ground and I have a hard time getting to my feet. The next thing I know, I see him standing over me, trying to save my life, until there's this huge light like what comes out of a crystal prism. And a bunch of cords like tentacles reach out and grab him, pulling him away. He's screaming, I'm reaching out to save him, and he disappears in the light, crying for help. The last thing I remember by that time is crawling towards something to escape before I see this huge hideous monster hurdling right for me, and then I wake up with a headache."

Listening to every word, her secret boyfriend held her close to show compassion. "Is this the dream you've been having for the last few days?" he asked.

"Two weeks," she said. "Two weeks, this has been going on. I didn't want to tell you because you were so busy as was I, but I figured I didn't want to frighten you with the disappearances that have happened."

"Do you remember what you were trying to run to?" he asked.

"Not sure," she replied. She searched for an answer, but came up with nothing. All she could remember from that night was gasping, her chest heaving with a tight squeeze on her lungs as she slowly crawled towards it. She was only a foot away but it felt so far and hard to get to. The monsters were everywhere; she couldn't escape. The only thing she remembered about the object in front of her before she blacked out was that it looked to be made of royal blue painted wood.

"It's ok to have a bad dream, baby," her boyfriend said. "There ain't nothing to be afraid of now. Fear is all you got to fear, so don't worry. It's the 1920s now, and we will start a new life by then."

Through the window, she could hear music again. The same man playing the saxophone was now playing the Saint James Infirmary Blues, so calm and cool as her man who soothed her as he asked her to come back to bed. He put the booze away and joined her in the bedroom lying next to her. While he fell asleep to the beautiful outside music that would one day become an art, Claire hoped she would never have that same dream again in her sleep.

One thing remained echoing in her mind, his voice. The man she dreamed about, the one who disappeared into the light, his voice kept calling out in a whisper to her like he never left. It was sad, lonely, afraid… like a lost traveler as scared as she once was when she got lost at younger times.

Clara… Clara… Clara…

As she went back to sleep, she at least wished he got her name right. Not Clara, Claire.

Maybe he's calling for some other woman named Clara. She let the thought linger and held onto it as she drifted back to sleep.

Pass Code failed. Three attempts remaining.


	2. Night One: The Fitz and Dizzyspells

Voodoo in Louisiana

A Doctor Who Anniversary Fanfiction

By Rachel Beth Ahrens

_Featuring the Twelfth Doctor, Clara Oswald, Danny Pink (Louis), and the Eleventh Doctor as performed by Peter Capaldi, Jenna Coleman, Samuel Anderson, and Matt Smith in the Doctor Who series for BBC One and BBC America._

Night One:

The Fitz and Dizzyspells

The first night when it started, the humid Gulf air grew heavier and thicker with a dense fog, like a single drop of milk passing through the watery atmosphere before resting on the lowest dew point outside the Bayou. Many Crescent City visitors and residents heeded the warnings of their elders when the fog settled in, right around the Mardi Gras. Grandparents, officers, the mayor, the sheriff, even the voodoo wizards in darker areas of the town all gave the most important piece of advice: _When Heaven's haze settles neath the sky, do not go a day's night outside/ In the low cloud the spirits come alive/ Breathe them in, they nab you to the Other Side._

No matter how many times she heard that poem, young Claire Oscar refused to believe its superstition. I don't believe in ghosts, she convinced herself. I never did, I don't intend to. Therefore, she chalked up the warning to be complete rubbish.

Early that morning when she arrived at work at the local school on the French Quarter's outskirts, her recurring nightmare returned to haunt her consciousness. Though it was not the dream she had last night, this was a constant living nightmare of hers only within her classroom where she taught English and Math. She originally wanted to teach languages like French and authors such as Jane Austen and Doyle, but the principal at the worn and run down southern school never allowed her, mainly because the literature was too advanced for the students. She respected this gentleman, but truly resented him in the silent manner when he explained why he prohibited the suggested curriculum, clenching her hand into a fist on his exact words, "Our academia is just fine where it's at; we don't want the kids to get the wrong impression, especially for some of them who are children of color."

That discussion the day he said this made her mind so overheated, she walked into her class, books and pencils in hand, dropped them on her desk to which all of her students quieted immediately, and looked up at them, saying, "What are you doing here?"

The eleven and twelve year old children stared at her, some glancing back at each other in puzzlement. Claire spoke again, "Do you really have to sit in those assigned seats every day?"

Their faces remained vacant. The majority of the students were light skinned and sitting up in front of the room, while the darker skinned students with much more tattered textbooks than the white kids' sat in the back. One of the children, a girl in the front row named Caroline, looked at her and said, "You assigned the seating chart, Miss Oscar."

"Well, that's going to change right now," Claire said with a dark tone of voice. "Everyone, switch seats, sit wherever you like."

Kids remained at their desks like they had frozen solid into statues.

"That's an order," she repeated. "Move to another seat, now."

A boy in the second row stood with his arms crossed and said, "What if I don't wanna sit in the back?"

She gave him a contemptive look and said, "Didn't I say sit wherever you like? Do it." She scanned at the two rows in the back and pointed at the students sitting there. "You lot, sit up here, closer to the front of the room, right now."

"I ain't sittin' next to no black boy!" another girl barked.

Claire's face became hot as she lowered her voice. "Do as you're told."

Nobody moved.

Claire stood with her back straight and said in a brighter resolving tone, "All right, if you won't move to another seat, I'd like everyone to turn their desks around and sit in a circle, now please."

Caroline asked again, "Why should we do that when we've been doing this all year?"

Claire took a breath and said, "You can think of this as an adventure, more of an experiment, if you will. I want all of you to turn your chairs and form a circle, and this is how we will conduct the class for the remainder of the semester, understand?"

The whispering ensued. Most of the students' questions they externalized knocked back and forth over, "What happened to Miss Oscar? Is she drunk? She been goin' to too many rot gut rooms, or she been dating some black guy? Naw, she's havin heat stroke. She'll pass out in a second. But it's January! Mardi Gras's comin! She couldn't have heat stroke, less it's Crawfish and Jumbalaya Festival. Maybe she ate too much gumbo and scalded herself with Tabasco..."

That was enough gossip talk. "Everyone up and move, or no Magic Show Friday! Move your desks or I will cancel James the Magician's show tomorrow and you'll have a surprise test, forty percent of your grade."

That made everyone shut up.

"Forward march," she commanded.

With that, the whole classroom body stood up and the squeaking sounds of moving tables and chairs were music to her ears.

That wasn't her nightmare, however. The kids used to be careless, the rowdiest bunch of students with their paper planes and pencil throwing chaos plummeting the room into complete anarchy. Angering her more was watching students getting bullied and tormented by their peers, and the bullies were always the white kids who never got the just punishment from the principal no matter how many times she sent them to the office. The white kids got a slap on the wrist, but a slap so light they remained ignorant and broke the same school rules over and over. Since the day she changed the seating arrangements, the kids got nicer.

The other teachers and the principal, consequently, were far less pleased to that regard. Principal Durst finding out that she integrated her own classroom and thus breaking Louisiana's segregation laws- that was her nightmare. Louis told her not to worry about it, for it was a very brave thing to do. Revenge is pretty sweet, she thought to herself.

That morning when she arrived at the faculty lounge, the two secretaries and seven other teachers, the entire teaching faculty, had taken up the whole room in a frenzy. The phones made a din of ringing amidst the great deal of talking and abrupt shouts of commotion.

Don't tell me I'm fired, her mind crossed.

Secretary Lisa approached Claire and said, "Miss Oscar, thank God you're here, it's really bad news."

"Bad news?" Claire repeated, heart quickening. Bugger, I'm getting the sack.

"James's family called in," Lisa said in a tizzy. "He's been missing since Sunday."

Friday, she remembered. It's Magic Show Friday and the magician is a no-show. Typical Friday morning for Saint Daniel Elementary, for the magicians showing up at the school every second week of the month ended up disappearing with their families filing missing person reports with the police. At last, Claire could take a deep resolving breath.

"That's terrible," Claire said, relieved but covering it with her remorse.

"What in the world are we going to do?" Lisa said, still panicked. "We can't just cancel Magic Friday again, the kids will start blousin' like they've been sippin' someone else's noodle juice."

Looking over her shoulder out the window towards the playground, she could have sworn she saw someone. The gray began to fold over the New Orleans horizon in a hazy southern blanket and blocking the sunlight. All that time, there seemed to be a bright flash of light slamming the ground inches from the window, the gray light accompanied with a face. A face she knew. The long blue dreadlocks almost resembled tentacles as they stretched inside. Her face blanched, her eyes peering in at Claire like stabbing daggers. The ghost woman wore old goose feathers under a black beaten bowler hat. Her gauzy dress snaking to the ground and slithering through the wall, the ghost woman widened her mouth in a howl. She almost had a grasp on Claire until she vanished in a second... and Claire forgot.

The face from her dream, it kidnapped the poor soul who rescued her.

The dark haze dispersed in an instant, the sun returning, and Claire turned her attention to the immediate dilemma at hand. "Don't be a wurp, Lisa, I'll handle this," Claire said and walked off, keeping her shuddering heart and mind steady. All the while, all she could only think of where she would find such a lazy bum who knew magic, out of all the fellas left in town from all the disappearances.

Outside on the playground behind the building, the clouds steadily came billowing in, rolling their wheels of humidity and condensation from the Gulf. Even for a February winter, the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Florida, and all the South states in between carried that same warm, misty atmosphere that cooled only by a small amount. That same climate always significantly increased in hot, humid pressure by the start of April. In the past year alone, Claire thought, she had never seen so much rainfall with so many hurricanes and storms feeling like monsoons, but not one drop of rainfall cooled the temperature around her.

Though she often missed the wintery snowy weather of her home country Mother England, Claire did enjoy the flourishing plant life of her city, as long as they didn't attack her in her dreams. Daisies and wildflowers grew in patches everywhere amongst the dirt roads bustling with the Model A Ford. No matter what the weather, London always had that cold, dark and gray stuffiness New Orleans never had. England's charcoal sullen sky never let in the sun, billowing smoke stacks from factories, and the soot covered every brick and building of what so many of her American chums called it old and merry. The more she thought of her last home, especially after the Great War, she felt less cheery in calling her nation's capitol "merry ol'". In fact, she remembered, it wasn't where I was born to begin with.

But at least England never had as many storms as Louisiana did, nor were the temperatures incredibly warm and an almost pleasant summer in the dead of the January winter.

Leaning against the quaint French style gate by the garden, Claire crossed her arms, her gaze falling on a row of sweet little townhouses, the sidings and doors painted in vibrant pastel colors. The revving of the big Fords with their chiming honks were not loud enough to conceal the waft of music from the old men sitting on a porch playing a slow blues on banjo and clarinet, nor the smell of beignets from the bakery around the corner.

But the smell... it changed quite apparently. Somehow, she could once again smell the soot, the smoke, and a distinctive cold and terse smell she couldn't put her finger on. It couldn't have been the Bayou swamp smell she was used to smelling. It wasn't London either, even though some parts of the city had a similar aroma. It also surely didn't smell of someone smoking a cigarette next to her, more like a speakeasy or night club she frequented with her mates, or even when she'd sneak in to find Dipper, her secret lover. That smell reeked of sausages, smoke, soot, and something else altogether... what was it?

...Refuse.

Slowly turning around and attempting to hold her breath for as long as possible, Claire found herself staring into the face of an old, haggard looking man, his short gray hair slightly curly and coarse, and piercing green eyes behind fearsome wrinkles and even sharper eyebrows. He frowned at her, as if his face only showed a vacant expression, almost like he never learned to smile. His clothes were tatters, unusual for a hobo to be lounging around on a kids' playground in 1921.

Taking a small step back, slightly startled by the tired, scary old hermit in a blue robe and patched up baggy pants, Claire let out another breath and sucked in another, only to politely cough on his pungent odor.

"Been looking for me?" he asked.

Claire thought it strange this question, as well as his deep voice. Clearly, he wasn't from the Crescent City, not even the United States. The accent had a British or more likely a Celtic root.

"Oi, I had no recollection of meeting you before, Johnny boy," Claire said. "Possibly would have taken me a great deal longer to recognize the smell."

The old hermit stood there, staring at her in thought. "Well, you did get my name half right for once," he continued. "Now, I need you to come closer and stay on my side with me. It's very dangerous here, though we may have to vacate the area so I can show you..."

"What in Heaven's name is eating you, dewdropper?" Claire exclaimed, whipping her hand away when he seized it.

The hermit recoiled in disgust to the way she spat at him. "Since when did you start talking like that? What's gone wrong with your accent? You sound all _American_! You're not even Engl-"

"You better make like a spruce or I'll scream for the coppers, got that?!"

Turning on her heel and quick stepping her march back to the school building for class, he charged after her and grabbed her arm again. "No, no, no! You don't understand! Listen to me!" he pleaded.

Claire pulled her arm to freedom again, but this time his grip fought hers. "Unhand me, you lout!" she said, but in a harsh quiet manner as to draw very little attention. The students would arrive any minute, she thought of saying, but the response got caught in her chest.

"Clara, Clara, it's **_me_**!" he finally confessed. He stared, practically screaming at her whole body for some hint or response acknowledging that she remembered him. But she only stared at him in shock, confused and horrified as watching a ghost revealing its ugly fangs and blood curdling screams.

That whole moment, Claire froze in the terror of him searching her. She had heard that maybe he had been beyond madness that the heat got to his brainpan and made him see things like Don Quixote and the wind mill beast. Others said he would only look upon the females, searching for his lost love, or maybe he really was just sink in the head, "from one too many dizzyspells."

At last, he let her wrist fall to her side. He beckoned one last time, "Clara?"

"Who's Clara?" Claire said, still puzzled, relaxing after he finally released her. Then she remembered, the name from the dream. "How do you know that name? Who is she?"

It looked like it still didn't register for the hermit across from her. "Clara, my Clara! Clara Oswald, schoolteacher at Coal Hill School in London! Impossible Girl!" He grasped her shoulders and bore his eyes into hers. "Clara, it's me, your Doctor! Last of the Time Lords! We met Robin Hood! Robbed the most impregnable bank in the universe! We stopped The Mistress with your boyfriend PE teacher's help..."

All of his babbling made no sense to her. He trailed off when he saw the fear written across her face.

"You don't..." he said quietly. "You can't remember..."

Releasing her again, he stood back frowning again. It sounded like he was in awe about her, until the next thing he said almost came off cynical, but above all rude and indifferent.

"Look at you, seriously, with the eyes again," the hermit spoke again at the sight of her thwarted look on her face. "How are you doing that, anyway? And they're not inflating with tears, no, they inflate like you see a stranger robbing you! I can't believe after all these months and all these years travelling, you can't… you can't just see me."

Claire felt her mouth going dry again, for she left her jaw open a little too long and nearly forgot to breathe. She got the nerve to ask again, "How do you know that name? Clara?"

The old man with the Celtic accent shook his head and said, "Never mind. You can't see me. I doubt you have even met me… not yet, anyway."

But as he backed away and sauntered off into the dirty road like the disillusioned men of the War, all she could think of was the possibility that he knew the woman in her dream. A woman who quite possibly looked just like her, for Claire never got a chance to see, or _remember_, what this Clara person looked like.

As to his last statement, she echoed it, feeling the words on her lips. 'I doubt you have even met me…"

Well, I already have just now, Claire thought as she walked back into the building for the bell ringing in the new session.

But out the corner of her eye when she hadn't made a single toe into the doorway, the same hermit fell to his knees and clutched his chest. Claire at first assumed it was all a rouse until she heard the old man yelp in a state of panic and pain. Fearing the first sign of a heart attack, she flew to his side to help him up slowly. As she clutched his arms and asked how he was feeling, he said, "No, I'm fine, this is all perfectly normal…"

"Doesn't look normal to me at all," said Claire, still holding him by his arms. Then she saw his hand was on the wrong side of his chest. He wasn't having a heart attack at all; his heart was on the left side and he was clinging to the right. That was the moment she knew to perhaps leave him be, though it perplexed her of the question of why the right side of the chest. Was there another heart there, or just one of his lungs?

"Are you sure you're all right, sir?" she said again.

Looking down at the right side of his chest, he said, "Bi-coronary malfunction, cosmic angst. It happens, mostly when the time-space continuum is in flux, and definitely when my time stream has been altered…"

He stood and took another daunting glance at Claire. "Basically means the other one is here, somewhere…"

"What 'other one'?" Claire asked. "What does that mean?"

"He must've come with you," the old hermit said, stepping back. "What did he look like? Big scarf? Leather jacket? Sand shoes… oh no, please don't say it's the bow tie man."

His evading all of her questions heated her blood to near boiling. "What are you playing at, boy-o? You're not gonna answer any of my questions, aren't ya?" she said hotly.

"Clara, I promise you, I'm not lying!" the old man returned.

Her face grew hotter. "Stop calling me Clara! The name is Miss Oscar!"

"Oh, well, pardon _me_, Miss Oscar, but I can see it right now you're in danger."

"I'll be sure to tell you, Johnny boy, who's really in danger, when I call the police!"

"Sure thing, Clara, I'm sure the fuzz will listen to you now," he said, backing down a little more but still angered. "After all, you'd be too stupid to do a thing like that, and even then, not even the police will be there to save you, if you remember-"

"I said **_stop_**_ calling me **CLARA!**_" her voice boomed, echoing almost throughout the entire town. But because no one really cared plus the fact that the town had been silent for several minutes, no one could hear her shouts at the old hermit. Taking a breath and lowering her voice back to a calmer tone, she said, "I do not want to hear another word from your mouth, is that understood? My name is Claire. Claire Melissa Oscar, and I'm a teacher at this school, of which you are not welcome here. So, dearest trespasser, I must ask you to leave presently. Now if you'll excuse me…"

And sharply turning around, she could see the mist darkening the road ahead of her. This time, the low cloud became thicker, rolling closer towards her like huge multi-layered waves of stratus and nimbostratus. Those types of clouds generally produced fog and a steady warm drizzle in the South, but the curious thing about this fog was it contained firing mini-shocks of electricity. She had never seen such tiny bolts and strikes of lightning. They rolled in like an approaching thunderstorm, coming for both of them, and as Claire swerved around, she found the place where she stood to be completely deserted. There were no more new cars chugging along down the dirt path and everyone had at least gone inside and out of harm's way. The clouds howled, much like the woman did in her dream. It gave the same low, whistling sound of winds coming straight for them… straight for Claire and her stranger.

Stunned, Claire kept her eyes on it, curious as to how phenomenal or how dangerous it might be. "What is that?" she said at last.

She felt the hermit's voice and breath against her ear. "Something I tried to warn you about, but I best not tell you."

"Why?" she said, turning to him.

He crouched to her eye level. "Because it's time to run from it," he breathed in a haunting low tone.

They turned toward it. The winds increased speed. The foggy mist thundered. The howl became a shriek that of a woman's voice. And out of that darkness, Claire made out a face… the same face she saw in the window. The mouth widened enough to swallow her.

So the old man pulled at her arm and shouted, "Run!"

The pair of them took off, screaming as the cloud mouth chased them down the street. Claire's blurred vision was instantaneous. As she ran with the smelly and mysterious psychopath, she found herself lost in the town she'd spent years living in. Every time and every corner they dodged, she could never tell which street they were on so she could find a way back to Saint Daniel, or all the way back home. At that point, she really had no choice but to follow the man running with her. She lost track of her thoughts of I can't trust him, he's a nobody. Now all she could think of was how in the blazes did I get in this mess? How do I get out?

In the midst of it all, something hit her square on the forehead, causing Claire to fall backwards. Losing his grip on her, the stranger caught her in time and pulled her to her feet. "Claire! Come on, get up, we can still make it!" he said.

She heaved, out of breath. "I can't," she sighed. "I'm bushed."

"There isn't enough time," he said. "You're wasting it! That's not the Clara Oswald I know!"

Hyperventilating, her head grew heavier and it was now too difficult to see. "That's because I'm not her," she replied, the faintness and shock taking effect.

He peered into her slightly closed eyes again before placing his hands on her head. Immediately, Claire felt a whirlpool sensation inside her head as if the man who saved her had just hacked her brain. He saw everything: all the parties, her boyfriends, the terrible war, her childhood, everything. But she could still hear him echoing that there was something missing, that it was all implanted for a reason. He wanted, no, it was a matter of life and death for him to find out. Just as he pulled out, he left her with one last thought.

"I know who you are," his voice echoed through the chambers of her mind. "But it'll be our little secret."

When she regained her vision one last time, the man parted with one last statement.

"Whatever it takes, Clara, I will get you better," he said. "And this time, I swear to you, I will _never_ let you _out of my sight_."

"Who are you?" Claire said in a tired whisper. "Why are you saving me again?"

"Because I'm the Doctor," was his answer.

It still didn't prove a good enough answer to either question as she blacked out. And as she plunged into another nightmare, the only thought that crossed her mind was, _Doctor who?_


	3. Night Two: Striped Spirit

Night Two:

Striped Spirit

The Doctor awoke, almost like he swallowed his sonic screwdriver and his stomach flipped the switch with a high pitched frequency enough to send a twitchy seizure-like electrical current through both of his hearts. Anything but the Cyberplanner, his mind raced. I had to cheat numerous times to win that chess match and evict that bloke from my head.

He jerked his head to all sides as he lied there on the frozen glossy floor, taking in every surrounding. Nothing. Everything was blank in that spacious room. No furniture, no architecture, not even a cheap painting on the walls—there were no walls! Everything glowed an opaque diamond white with no doors or windows, no horizon or a bit of outdoor vegetation either. No one could see any atmosphere, let alone the hint of stars and planets beyond, though the Doctor loved a good skylight. The room seemed to go on forever with just the gleaming floor and a white haze everywhere, like being trapped in a snow-globe, but the walls of the dome were invisible. Could be a perception filter, he thought. Or not… Where's Clara when I need her?

He jumped to his feet, only to feel dizzy and as clouded as the fog that engulfed him when he and Clara were separated. The chest pain made him lurch forward, stumbling. Oh no, what's the nasty cloud done to you, lefty? He made a fist with his right hand and started punching the left side of his chest, assuming his left heart went dormant. Then he realized it wasn't his heart at all, it was his respiratory system causing the irrepressible chest pain, tightening everything and squeezing his lungs like a stress plushy thing. The same with his head, growing heavier and heavier until his knees hit the ground; the rest of him collapsed on his stomach a second later. Stop it, just stop it… fingers… need custard… fish, fishy fingers… custard…

The floor vibrated with footsteps, him hearing the thuds in the floor against his ear pressed close against it. There was no telling where it came from until they got louder and a set of medium size-heeled sandals covering white ankle socks swerved into view. One foot tapped against the floor, the Doctor wincing at the close sound, before the woman wearing the socks and open toed black comfort heels crouched to eye level. Going by her face, this lady was not Clara at all; her hair was too red and gingery, all coifed with a 1950s pompadour pouf in the front. Her eyes had a bright crystal sapphire gleam to them, somewhat of his dear blue box. Higher cheekbones, taller and leaner than Clara, a mirror image of that ginger beauty school dropout in the teenage poodle-skirt-leather-jacket movie, though she had longer hair than any of the Pink Ladies… She wore a black and white dotted dress with a brown flower belt under a bright periwinkle jacket just barely touching her dress's hem.

"Sup, babydoll?" she coyly chirped in her slight cockney London voice. It was hard to tell where she got that accent from any part of England; he nearly felt he'd never heard that voice before.

He was certain this was a dream. Feeling around his inside coat lining for the pocket, he found his screwdriver, relieved that he didn't swallow it. Pressing the green point against his head and hitting the switch, he checked his vitals until the nouveau drape greaser girl snatched it from his hand.

"Oi! Give that back," he yelped.

"Quiet, Mister Britty," she said, attentively analyzing his sonic.

"You don't know how to possibly…"

She put a finger to her lips before he could get the sentence out. "Shhhhh…"

The Doctor silenced himself involuntarily. He wanted to speak and opened his mouth to do so, but no sound. No, wait a moment, that's my trick, he exclaimed in his mind. That should only work on thick people like Craig and his little baby Alfie, not me!

Paying the Doctor no mind, Miss Rockabilly Ginger kept eyeing his scientific tool of choice, turning it and twirling it like a baton with her fingers. "Hmm, haven't seen one of these puppies in quite a long time," she quipped.

She stopped twirling it in her right hand, pressed the switch three times, and held it down for five seconds on the fourth, flashing the green light in the Time Lord's eyes. Giving it a shake, the prongs flicked open as she held it straight up at eye level.

"Psychic toxicity: thirty-five percent," she said, stating the analysis like a Time Lord diagnosis. "Thirty-eight and nine, oh, honey, you're sick as a dog, poor dear!"

The Doctor suddenly realized he'd forgotten about his flop sweat all this time. When he came to, he thought his suit with jacket vest and purple coat were making him a little warm under the bow tie. Now he felt something wet rolling down his back, lying all stuffy headed and using his finger to pull and adjust the tie. Thirty eight and nine… meaning 38.9 Celsius… slightly above a hundred and two in Fahrenheit… perfect fever unusual in Time Lords, but typical for humans coming down with the influenza virus.

He knew the last time something like this happened. A few specks of pollen got into the time rotors of his spaceship-time-machine and induced a dream state for him and his friends the Ponds. And it all began with a single sneeze; before he knew it, he and Amy with her then-fiancé Rory faced the Dream Lord: a dream where Amy was married to Rory and very round and pregnant in Leadworth, the other in the Tardis flying toward a frost burning cold star. All from a single sneeze, so he fretted if he would start hearing loud bird chirping noises if he did.

Instead, it came from the painful irritation in the lungs. He wheezed, attempting to gulp more air until something sticky caught in the throat, a sting enough to block the main airway.

Miss Rockabilly Ginger sensed the oncoming cough fit seconds ahead. She tapped him on the neck with her two fingers to stifle any coughing.

"Don't even think about it, love," she said. "You start coughing, the worse the hallucinations get, believe me. I used to have the same thing once, and you really don't want it to get worse."

The Doctor blinked, swallowing the sting that left his throat raw as if he swallowed sandpaper. "Right, then," he said. "Anything I can take for the pain?"

"Leave that to me," the ginger answered. "I'll be right back to wrap you up pretty."

She slid her legs from her leaning hip posture and stood, the Doctor's gaze following her as she reached for a little blue sequined handbag and pulled a pink stick and a vial of clear fluid from her bag. Returning, she took the vial and clicked it into position at the bottom of the pink stick, which reminded him of his sonic screwdriver without the prongs. Hers had a gold and copper painted alloy surrounding the rosey case. Taking his left wrist and unbuttoning the cuff, she gripped the pen and jabbed a vein with the ruby red point. "Hold your breath, love."

She hit the switch as it whirred a low hum. The effect felt like a Cyberman stabbing him with an Epi Pen; the Doctor shouted in alarm. "Gaaaaah!"

She firmly held his arm down, not letting him recoil or retract it. "Hold still! I told you to hold your breath; your arm's going to feel pressurized for a couple moments. You won't be able to move your arm for at least fifteen minutes. Relax."

"How can I relax with you stabbing me like a Sontaran nurse?" the Doctor snapped.

When the vial of fluid emptied, she turned off the pink screwdriver, ejected the vial, and tossed it behind her. Immediately, the Doctor's entire left arm muscles radiated numbness with the feeling of thousands of microscopic Daleks firing their lazing weapons through the skin, and without the belligerent cries of "Exterminate". But the sudden relief from his symptoms was instantaneous. His body temperature began to cool, the chest pain and head pressure had started to fade.

"What did you just do to me?" he asked, sitting up with more ease.

"You mean what I did _for_ you?" she said with a sneer. "That's the recombinant dionytrogen antidote, the first half of it. It should abate the symptoms a little longer until we get you the second half of the antidote you sorely need to kill the nasty bug in your brain. For now, what I gave you should take the edge off, know what I mean?"

This confused him enough. "What? I'm sorry, what? No, no, there must be something I'm missing… What was it?"

He jumped to his feet and started pacing again as if he never felt any of his symptoms at all. The ginger in the periwinkle coat stood too, as the Doctor paced, his hand resting on his trousers' belt held by suspenders underneath his waistcoat. As he mumbled something under his breath, the floor rumbled, causing the both of them to fall back and catch themselves without landing on their backs.

Upon steadying herself, the rockabilly ginger girl said, "You done contemplating your bare surroundings, professor? Because believe me, this empty space-room is all very interesting until it all explodes!"

The Doctor straightened himself, fixing his bow tie and towering above her. "Perhaps that's all what we're supposed to think. Looking by the evidence, I'd say this is a pocket universe sustained with a perception filter, collapsing all over the universe in different areas in the fragments of time. I'd say we've been here, what, under two minutes? So, I'm guessing it's only a matter of minutes until... weh... erm... I wouldn't say a kaboom-ing explosion. You could say we have a small time-space window to find a hole back to our universe before this place..."

"Eats itself?" she said, finishing for him while fixing her hair in her hand mirror she extracted from her blue handbag.

The Doctor gasped in disgust as she put the mirror away. "No! No! Why would you think like that? What is wrong with you? What are you, some sort of-"

"Teenager?" she finished him again. "I guess you could call me that, since technically I am in my adolescence, though I am not as young as you think."

"Really?" he said to test her. "Going by your face, I'd say you're a human female, about five feet tall, give or take, and you're about, what, twenty one, twenty two? You may as well take after Rose Tyler, the last time I saw her, or even Jo Grant before her face and skin got all pruney."

The ginger stomped closer to him, her face hot and her sneer nearly at level with him. "Oh, so I guess I'm not all pruney yet, pardon me, proffy! Early twenties, you say? Flattering, but a long shot from spot on!"

"Then enlighten me, what age are you?" the Doctor asked.

"I'm two hundred and thirty six years old, and dontcha forget it!" Miss Rockabilly Ginger said, all haughty and somewhat Cockney, like a miniature red haired Eliza Doolittle.

"Ah, I don't think I remember much of being in my 230s; not lots going on and I was much more inclined to steal a spaceship," the Doctor said, a cheery quickness to his tone. "But I don't believe I had that biker man phase with my hair greased like that… and wearing a leather jacket or some such tattooed hoodlum nonsense."

She pointed a finger at him and stormed off into the white void. Suddenly, the Doctor noticed there was something familiar about this young lady, as if he knew all of her mannerisms, her speech, and the way she dressed as if they used to be a part of him. She embodied the soul of a whole other person he used to be in one moment of his life, more of a past regeneration. He looked down at her shoes. She wore socks with her pumps, but she was now changing them to a pair of sneakers she pulled out of her purse. She had a purse that was bigger on the inside, or was it really? Not only that, the sneakers she strapped to her feet were Converse high top Chuck Taylors, periwinkle sand shoes to match her coat.

Upon feeling and hearing something rumble close by, the Doctor recognized one more thing as he glanced one last time at the ceiling. As there were no cracks, falling rubble, or even a light, cloudy overcast, this place was a long way from being under an implosion. Checking his gold wristwatch again, he ran to the ginger as she finished tying her shoe and grabbed her by the arm.

"I know and I'm sorry! I know exactly what this is now and I swear I am loving this," he said with a childish smile that faded when he got to the next sentence. "But we have to keep from running."

"Oi, I just put on my trainers!" said the ginger. "My dad used to wear a pair like these, and I've just bought them for such an occasion. So you're telling me not to make a mad dash for it, is that all? Let go of me!"

"All right, but just listen to me," he said, releasing his grip on her and taking her by the shoulders. "Do you have any idea why this room is so empty?"

She paused a moment to think. "Haven't given it a thought, no. But there is the fact that the ceiling is, well… swollen."

For five seconds or more, there was dead silence that intrigued both of them enough. "Swollen, you say?" said the Doctor.

"Yeah, says me, but it's actually still swelling up," said the ginger. "The whole room keeps expanding, like a temporary parallel pocket universe that, instead of eating its face like a tormented bloke gagged and strapped to a chair listening to that 'Love Me Like You Do' Ellie Goulding monstrosity on repeat in a dark, locked room for hours, like it's supposed to do, it keeps gorging, like a kid on Halloween coming home with a ten pound sack of trick or treats."

The Doctor stepped back as the lady with the brand new sand shoes opened her purse again and began chewing on something very pink and sugary as if from a carnival. Still perplexed by her scientific knowledge of space-time travel, horrible fifties fashion sense, and a personality akin to his former regeneration, he put one last question to her.

"What's your name?"

"A very excellent question so late in the conversation," she said, innocently and politely chewing on the pink candy with her mouth closed. "Or perhaps it is too early to tell."

She took the candy bar wrapper from her handbag for another piece—bubblegum disguised as fluffy clouds of sugar from a state fair, which puzzled him more.

"You didn't answer my question," the Doctor added. "How could you have lived for two centuries when you look…?"

"Young?" she said with a perky grin. "I guess that's the secret of my family."

"Your family?"

"Well, yeah, my dad brought me up a little about his home planet, or he tried to right around my birthday. His girlfriends were great help too, until some loser general shot me in the chest. Though in reality, he was aiming at my father and almost shot him when I got in the way to save him. So I died in my dad's arms the day after I was born, quite rightly. And then! The unthinkable! I woke up as if I had a quiet little nap on a great big spaceship full of humans and aliens, where the ship had grown trees—its own ecosystem! Then I realized I was never dreaming… and it was up to me to find my father's home, travel the universe, and do a whole lot of running, just as he did. That is who I am."

The Doctor stood in dumbfounded paralysis. He now knew what she was exactly. "You're a _Time Lord_?"

"Time _Lady_, dearest, and a genetically engineered one at that," she said, correcting him. "I may not have been born on Gallifrey, but I do have two hearts. Folks call me all sorts of things: GI Jane, Ginger, Jenny, Sandy—heaven knows why—even Sylvia Plath named a poem after my nickname Lady Lazarus. Killed herself in an oven, poor babe. Anyway, the Time Lord Academy refugees from the Time War made me their honorary leading lady by inducting me as The Stripe, or The Doctor's Daughter, though they're not really great names at all. I prefer to call myself Miss Wonder Woman!"

The Doctor's mouth hung open in shock. She had to be lying, if only he had never felt her pulse. For when he seized her arm, he knew she had a double heartbeat, just like his. She might have the perfect red hair, at least, he thought, but she did resemble everything they did together with Martha Jones and Donna Noble, the two 'girlfriends' as she called them. He thought he lost her forever in the seven-day war of humans and a race called the Hath, but there she was right in front of him.

His daughter just came home.

"Jenny?" was about all he could muster.

"Yes, lovely to meet you," Jenny said at last. "Though I'm hoping you'll refrain from calling me that in the future while I get to learn about you, just call me The Stripe or Miss Wonder Woman for now, seeing as we're not going anywhere at present."

Taking one last piece of cotton-candy bubblegum, she offered the leftover king sized bar to the Doctor, totally oblivious from the thought of her father's incredulous reunion with his daughter.

"Air Heads?" she said.


	4. Night Three: A Magician's Secret

Night Three:

A Magician's Secret

When Claire Oscar stirred, something bright green, almost blue, nearly blinded her. Upon waking, the blurry green light flickered in her eyes and evaporated in another second. Still thinking she was living her nightmare over again, the same old hermit's face came into focus, though her vision remained slightly blurred and accompanied by the feeling of something wretched curdling inside her brain, as well as her stomach.

"Clara, can you hear me?" the hermit said softly, his voice muffled and mixed with the whine of discombobulation. She thought it might have been an explosion coming from some new vehicle invention, but then she remembered the bumbling clouds engulfing both of them. How could clouds possibly make her ears ring with so much pressure and sharp pain?

"Clara… Clara…"

Another face came into view, this time speaking with a different voice. He was English, like her, but dressed like a Victorian school instructor, especially with his dress sense. Who in their right mind wore a vest jacket, a purple suit, and bow ties anymore? It was plain to see that his claims of his bow ties being attractive were as close to the attractiveness of his sticky-out bulbous chin.

Drawing in a breath, she felt as if her whole mind was collapsing with her crushing skull. Her consciousness drifted in and out, the black screen from her dreams flickering on and off between blackouts and waking. That same screen was left blank, with a typewriter keyboard even too advanced for the early 1920s. She felt like she'd seen one of those before, but how could she, when she was born in 1894, the 23rd of November? The black machine before her remained dormant, until a couple of green markings flashed onto the screen.

PASSWORD?

One word, nine letters. That was all she had to type. The keyboard looked simple enough to use; it had all the buttons of a typewriter. She recognized the QWERTY letters stamped on each key. But which to press? I've forgotten the password, she reminded herself for a fraction of a moment. Is there a button or a folder with a question written down to help you remember the password? There are passwords and codes to get into some of the bars and clubs around here, since the new Amendment to the Constitution stipulates that booze is illegal in all forty some states. Wait, why am I saying this? What am I thinking?

She brought herself back to the blank screen again, pondering if she should try a new pass code to break into the system. It might have been the only way to gain back her consciousness, if she still had it. Her first thought that came to mind was on the basis of her lack of sleep and the fatigue that plagued her for the past two weeks. Without putting her fingers to the keypad, the screen started typing for her, the green figures appearing on the screen:

DYTSLT10X

The log screen gave a blaring noise with two red lines appearing below the login:

ACCESS DENIED: PASS CODE FAILED.

TWO ATTEMPTS REMAINING.

How could I have only two attempts left? I've only started logging in, she thought in alarm coinciding with the buzzing of the 'Access denied' screen. Suddenly, she felt it, a surge of energy entering her brain as if someone was hacking into her hard drive. Right then, the dream flashed in front of her, just the one fragment of it from the very end of it before waking.

The first thing that came to her ears was the gasping breaths. The woman in the dream Claire easily recognized as herself all right; her short brown bob pulled back with a red headband, the feather torn off like the ripped hem of her crimson flapper dress. She was crawling and reaching out for something as if her survival depended on it, her arms stretching out to something wooden and painted a bright royal blue. Now and then, she turned her head, looking back in terror as if something was following close behind. The clouds from before, when she was running with that strange hermit, they were looming above her and getting denser from behind. It crawled closer. All Claire could comprehend was she needed to stay clear away from it all before getting any worse. Popping into that blue shed wouldn't be such a bad idea, she assumed.

But she kept gasping for another breath. The air seemed to become too thick for her lungs to ingest. I held my breath too long and now I'm dizzy, her mind raced, making merry-go-round rings over her head. She thought she heard the voice of someone with the same labored breathing as she had, and turned and faced another poor gasping soul. It was the exact same man in the purple suit and bow tie, but he evaporated in white wisps, revealing himself to be a ghost after all. Reaching out to the white smoke, she felt nothing except the condensation leaving her fingers.

She turned back to the blue shed. It wasn't standing there anymore. The lights had already gone out and it became difficult to see. She put all of her strength into her arms to stand. Her legs, however, couldn't take a smooth gait. A cold, cool sensation pricked itself through the side of her head. She tried to stand, but only fumbled and fell face down. I have to get up, she forced her thoughts, shaking off the constant wills of doom and gloom. It's not safe. Let me out. Gotta get out of here. Breathe, honey, breathe! Get out of here! Let me out! Not… safe…

KEE-EEE-EE-EE!

A soaring spirit figure appeared where the blue wooden box-shed once was. In less than a second, the wispy bat charged at Claire, screeching directly in her face, fangs opened wide. It swallowed her whole as she screamed and collapsed. And upon passing out, she saw the same woman—dark olive skin, gray almost blue dreadlocks, warts on her forehead and chin, those long pointed fingernails like daggers, and those cold dead eyes. The woman clocked her head to the side like an owl, cracking her neck and grinning. Only her smile had discolored and broken teeth, and the smile grew until the dimples were at her cheekbones.

The Voodoo Queen whispered in a Creole voice: "You're next, Clara ma belle… Time to sleep… Time to die…"

"Claire! Claire!"

Immediately, Claire heard someone shout above her as she whimpered, thrashing around, wanting to wake up. She wished aloud that it was all a dream—that it never really happened.

"CLAIRE! WAKE UP, BABY!"

Her eyes snapped open and found the face of her lover, sweet Louis. Claire fought the urge to hyperventilate in her state of panic. It was all a dream, she mentally repeated to herself as she slowly rose to a sitting position on her hands. Her elbows still quivered as she steadied her back.

Louis touched her head as she started to feel disoriented. "Easy, babe, get up nice and slow, dahhlin'."

"Flap your heels, Louis," Claire said. "This is my school and you shouldn't be here."

"Don't you be talkin' like that to me, honey," Louis said. "For all I know, _you're_ not s'posed to be here! You don't look well yourself, that's all I'm sayin'." He helped her to her feet and caught her in his arms to break another fall. "Hey, now, I'm takin' you home an' puttin' you to bed."

Claire steadied herself, standing without a waver in her knees, and clinging to Louis. Briefly after one glance into his brown eyes, she pulled away from him, brushing herself off. "I'm fine," she replied.

"Baby, you look far from fine," said Louis, grave concern in his eye. "You so pale you look like you seen a ghost or the Zulu Queen." He touched her forehead. "You got yourself a fever too, I'd imagine."

Claire looked back at her man and said, "Honestly, Louis, you don't have to play nursemaid around me. We can't be seen together anyway. I should be teaching class and you should be getting ready for your show tonight."

"I don't care about the Lincoln Park show tonight. I could go back and do it some other time. All's I care about is treating my West End baby right." He pulled her closer, almost leaned in enough for a kiss.

Claire put a finger to his lips. "I'm not even from the West End of London," she said. "I thought you knew about my English sass."

"You sassy enough for me," said Louis in a low tone and giving her a brief buss on the mouth.

"Now can I go teach a class?" Claire said as if asking her husband permission.

"Only if I know I made you feelin' a little better," Louis said with his big dipper-mouthed smile.

"Much better," she sighed, coyly smiling back at him. As he pulled away, Claire held her shoulders back with a wave of confidence she knew she needed, thanks to her secret boyfriend. Then she remembered James the Magician. She scoffed and added, "And now I have to go deal with the fact that we don't have a magic show for today, so I'm probably gonna have to give a surprise test today."

Louis touched her shoulder. "Hey, don't you worry 'bout anything. It'll all come together, you see. I can't believe how I fell in love with a tomato makin' a mess of herself."

"Really, Louis, I'm just fine!"

"A'ight, babe. You know I loves you as much as you loves me. All I'm sayin' is loosen up a little, don't be a stiff."

"I'll try." She pulled in for one last quick kiss before letting him go. "Now go chase yourself before winter leaves with you."

Louis chuckled as they went opposite directions and were gone.

Strangely enough, close to no one at school noticed Claire had disappeared, let alone fainted within the past hour. The students were in their classrooms, reading their books in their designated seats by the segregation laws, all except for Claire's classroom, which she hoped would never let word out to the faculty. It never once entered her mind when she approached her school room for English class. She would think of a plan to avoid getting the sack later—either by means of lying to the principal or finding a replacement magician for James. She could, perhaps, find someone to dress as a clown, but she shuddered to think of the last time she tried that and failed. Now the thought of applying the face paint and red nose herself terrified her.

But upon opening the class door, an exploding noise erupted through the classroom, stabbing through her now tender ears. Frantically turning this way and that, her eyes caught sight of an old man at the front of the classroom, playing a magic trick with a lit candle. It was more of a science than a magic trick, however, because a balloon exploded once it got too close to the flame.

Oh wait, Claire resounded in disdain. It's the hermit heretic from the street again! There he was, wearing a much different suit, what looked to be green and yellow striped pajamas, as the children in their unassigned integrated seats, burst into laughter.

"Who did that?" the hermit shouted in his angry Scottish tone. "No, seriously, I'd like to know how that happened! All I did was place it on the desk…"

He took another already inflated balloon and placed it by the candle. But the closer it got to the flame, the more it expanded, until, SNAP! Blue pieces of latex balloon were scattered everywhere. The hermit sighed, the dark blue mouthpiece of the balloon still in his hand. "Oh, that one was my favorite."

More laughing engulfed the classroom. Claire had enough of the rabble. Just as the hermit was about to demonstrate the trick with a lit candle inside a glass bottle and an egg sitting on top of the open bottle neck, Claire stomped to the front desk, her desk, hands in clenched fists on her hips.

Smirking with his hand holding the egg poised over the bottle, the hermit turned and fixed his cold stare at her. "I thought they sent you home early," he said.

"No, of course not, I teach here," Claire said, staring angrily up at him. He stood at nearly a foot taller than she did, but she did appear to be the more intimidating one. The children already knew this, and their laughing voices went into sudden silence. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"Nothing you need to know about," he said, placing the egg on top of the glass bottle with the burning flame inside. "Now that you've been reduced to the next pudding brained idiot like your P.E. teacher boyfriend, why don't you go on home and nurse that prattling little headache of yours?"

This only angered her more. The air around the bottom of the egg began to fog the scoffed. "I don't have a headache! And now you're teaching my class, doing my job?"

"I'm filling in for James the Magician, only I'm John the Magician," the strange hoodlum hermit cried. He leaned in closer to her and whispered, "I know I haven't been able to introduce myself again, since you don't remember me. So I'm just playing along. I'm John Smith—and you are?"

"Claire, Claire Oscar," she replied. "Now if you would kindly…"

Before she could get another sentence out, the hermit who called himself John Smith rejoined the classroom and continued his magic spiel. "Thank you for that marvelous assistance, Miss Claire Oscar, if that is your real name. After all, we all have things hidden… up our sleeves…"

Out of his jacket sleeve, he pulled out another balloon, deflated, before inflating it with gas from the Benson burner on the desk. "And I believe our egg is about ready," he said, tying a knot in the now inflated blue balloon.

The egg gave a popping noise, thumping up and down in the top of the neck until it slid down and, _thunk_, hit the inside bottom of the bottle with the lighted match still burning. The entire class oohed and ahhed at the sight of the scientific marvel that he passed off as practical magic. Claire was unimpressed, knowing she could never be fooled by the basic laws of chemistry and physics. She knew about science, even as a young schoolteacher of English and mathematics. John Smith held the glass bottle up to everyone to show the wonder. "Well, look at that, students… I guess we'll have to cook our eggs in another way. Should I break the bottle to get the egg, or should I let the egg cook inside the bottle? Because getting it back out of there is the trickiest part."

The class applauded. He put the glass bottle down as the children shouted at him to produce the egg out of the bottle. Only one kid shouted, "Make balloon animals! I want balloon animals!"

John winced at the din of the audience and placed a hand to his forehead. Right then, he stretched out his arm and called out to the rest of the room, "All right, shutitty up! I will gladly finish the job and get the egg back out of the bottle."

The audience cheered loudly as he picked the bottle up again. Just as he put the bottle to his lips to give a good blow, the door flew open. Claire's heart quickened. The jig was up. But it wasn't the principal or one of the teachers either. It was Marvin, the class clown, only he had a very vacant serious expression on his face. "Miss Claire! Miss Claire!" he shouted. "The low clouds are comin' again! We better get goin'!"

"Oh no, I'm not falling for that again, Marvin," said Claire. "You get back to your class now or I will file a report with Principal Durst."

"But Miss Claire, honest! I ain't applesaucin' again! Honest, miss'um! The clouds are comin' up the river, look!"

Everyone looked out the windows on the left side of the stingy classroom. She could hear the whistling of the winds from behind the window pane. The dark gray clouds rolled and rumbled toward the rest of the town, covering every inch of horizon. The children looked frightened, but John Smith the new magician was not. He didn't have that glossy scared look in his eye. He took one last glance out that same window and stood at Claire's side. He whispered in her ear, "It's coming for you."

She whirled around in panic. "What's coming?" she said, demanding him.

"Something I'd rather not share with the likes of you," he said. "I promised to keep your secret safe and to keep you safe, and I'm doing just that."

"The likes of me?" Claire said. "What could you mean by that? You interrupted my class time, you stood in for the missing magician without the school's permission…"

"Actually, Principal Durst made a very good case for me," he told her with a smirk. "There was a job opening, and I went for it. Do you want to see the papers he signed on me?"

Shaking her head, Claire continued her angry ramble. "And now you say you're keeping secrets and you want to save me? I don't know who you think you are, or if you're ossified or something…"

"Ossified? Since when do you use words like ossified?" John said. He looked out the window again. The clouds rolled closer to the school. "All right, you got me. I'm a madman, a hoodlum, a rambler, a gambler, and every possible crazed person you could think of in the Roaring Twenties. But all I need is nine seconds. Give it time, and those nine seconds can save your life, if you don't let the clouds creep in. Just give me nine seconds, nine… seconds."

Claire looked outside again and turned back to the crazy old man with the haggard face, aged lines framing his eyes, mouth, and nose. She did remember when she passed out, being helpless and unconscious without a small hope. She had great difficulty remembering a password in her dreams, and she certainly never wanted that nightmare to interfere with her subconscious mind ever again. She was cautious with the words she chose. "Why nine seconds?"

John drew closer to her and lifted her head. He said in her eyes, "Because those are not clouds. It's how they hunt."

"How who hunts?"

"The minions of the Shadow Lady," he said, a cold chill in his voice. His gaze stared down at her with awakening eyes as his eyebrows pushed more fearful and angry lines on his forehead.

Claire froze. She wanted to say something but stammered to choose the right words. "Ok, nine seconds starting from now," she said. "What do we do?"

"That's the Clara I know," John said with chilled glee in his tone that he harnessed to the floor with his grumpy airs. "And shut up while you're at it; I need to think," he snapped back as he turned away to the desk.

Claire glanced at her watch to count, only to look up at him again to defend herself that he got her name wrong again. Instead, she said nothing and counted the seconds.

"Children, stand back at the corner and get down," John said, ordering them like a headmaster. "You too, Clara."

"Claire!" she yapped back, correcting him.

"Names, not my area," John said. "Get back and get down with the others, now."

She and the kids did as they were told as Claire counted the seconds, crouched below the desks. She heard hissing coming from the air vents, but no gas or fumes emitted from any of them. Seven, eight, nine… out from the edges of the door, the smoke and fumes slithered into the room and engulfed the students' desks to form a single black cloud. The same face from the dream protruded from the cloud, the mouth giving a low growl. Then the hermit named John Smith took a gold plated pen from his jacket pocket and pointed it at the cloud like a weapon. But how could he defend himself against a big cloud with a single pen, Claire thought, bewildered.

But before she could say anything else, the hermit magician said, "Go in peace. These people mean you no harm and they are under my protection. I will never ask you again for as long as I'm around. I will give you ten seconds to leave, and never return."

The face closed her mouth and stopped growling. "Are you sure you want to do that?" she said. Claire recognized the same voice the cloud used in the dream, except as a gypsy voodoo woman, not a wispy ghost of water vapors. "Is that what you wish for?"

"Leave this instant," John commanded. "Ten… nine…"

"Counting the seconds won't do you any better, man," the cloud said as John continued counting down. "It doesn't even start with the words I wish. You have to say the magic words and I will be gone."

"Five. Do you really think that's going to work on me?" the hermit said. "I don't take orders from anyone, especially some alien creature like yourself. Now you're going to tell me what you are exactly before we get to the particulars of what you're doing here and why you're feeding off the dreams of children."

"Funny, I don't take orders either," said the cloud. The children looked at each other, fear and terror written behind their eyes. "I guess that makes the pair of us."

"Four. Three. Let's just speed the process a little more, shall we? An answer for an answer: what are you keeping locked up here that's interfering with my flight patterns? What are you holding captured?"

"Is that your wish?" the cloud repeated again. She cocked her face to one side as if she was an owl or a bird with a kink in its neck. "I don't take your question without the proper help I need."

"What kind of help?" John the hermit said.

"The kind that only the owls can tell," said the cloud. "A secret to secret between us. I intend to keep yours in due time, Time Lord."

"How did you know that?" John said. Claire knew he was up to something and he had lied to everyone about who and what he was. She wanted to accuse him and force him to tell her the truth, but she kept her mouth shut to find out what these mysterious and nefarious clouds were for.

"You have your magician's secrets, we have ours as voodoo ladies," said the cloud.

The hermit was now shouting. "Voodoo? That's complete rubbish; any scientist can prove you wrong! How can a cloud form in a classroom anyway unless you're made of frozen carbon dioxide? Where did you come from, liquid nitrogen? A smog machine! Dry ice from some fancy night club! There's one thing I detest more than karaoke and it's dancing, I'm afraid."

"Your questions are intriguing, but there is one more soul I require," said the ghostly cloud, an arm of smoke reaching out from the mist and pointing a finger at Claire. The face jerked its head back into the upright position and stared at the person she pointed at. Claire looked around and held her breath when she found it was her they wanted.

"You can't touch her," hermit John said.

"That I can do, unless you wish me to spare her," said the cloud.

"No, I mean you really can't touch her. You're just vapors." And with a sharp swift hand movement, John gave his golden pen a shake, in which the prongs opened up, and he pressed a button making the tip of the pen glow a greenish blue and a whining hum. In a split moment, the Creole voice from the cloud screamed, and the smoke and vapors of the cloud were sucked into the light of the pen and absorbed when the light turned off.

Claire stood up. John put the strange pen away. The clouds outside were gone from the windows now, and the sunshine returned. That still didn't clear things up with her at all, for she needed answers now. "What did you do?" she demanded when she met the hermit's face.

"It was simple," John said. "All I did was reverse the polarity, neutralized the air pressure and quality in the room, and made the classroom dry up the cloud. You know schools don't have rain clouds in any of them no matter how many bowls of water you distribute throughout every room and corridor."

The children stood up at last and brushed themselves off from all of the wind and dirt. "What was that?" cried one of the children. "Where did it come from?"

Claire was relieved that the cloud had disappeared and she didn't have another sleeping nightmare spell. She immediately pulled John Smith aside and dragged him by the arm out of the classroom and outside the school. The weather had cleared up so incredibly quick, the blue skies and sunshine returning to the now deserted roads, but the hermit magician still had questions, number one being…

"Where are we going? Why are you dragging me?"

"I think we both need a drink," Claire said resounding. "And you're going to tell me everything, starting with where the hell you came from."

"That, I believe, is a secret in itself," he said, pulling her back and looking her in the eyes. "But if you trust me, I'll let you in on it."

"And how long is that going to take?" Claire said.

"As long as it needs to," the hermit replied. "I've told you before, I'm here to protect you, for I know you're always in danger, more so now than you have been in the past."

Glancing out the corner of her eye and back at him again, Claire said, "We'll see."


	5. Night Four: No Admittance

Night Four:

No Admittance

The Doctor slapped his sonic screwdriver with his bare hands. He pushed the button twice as it whirred. It wasn't supposed to make that noise he thought it was making. Jenny felt a headache coming on from all of her father's groans as she sat there chewing.

"Maybe there's no sonic reception here," Jenny said, her legs crossed as she propped herself by her hands. Still oblivious to the fact that her father was standing in front of her analyzing their surroundings, she stuck her tongue out to form a pink bubble and blew.

A spark flew up from the floor by the sonic. "It's meant to do that," he said.

Her bubble snapped. "Clearly," she said, still chewing her gum.

The Doctor gave his screwdriver a shake as the prongs opened in front of him. Peering at it he said, "No admittance, eh?"

Jenny sat up properly and crossed her arms. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"There's a rift right in this spot," he said, shining his sonic at the area in the ground. "But here's a thing, where's the draft in here?"

Jenny stood to where the Doctor made his analysis. "You really think there should be a draft in here? I keep tellin' you there isn't one, but it's like you don't trust me."

The Doctor turned to her and sharply added, "Well, you'd have the same difficulty trusting the person, especially if that person is weh… er…"

Jenny glared at him. "If the person is, what?"

The Doctor stumbled on words before continuing. "Is someone you thought you knew until they were stolen from you, and later, you start worrying about them regenerating until you try to forget, but it's no use because they're right in front of you—They lied to you the whole entire time! That's what I meant to…"

He trailed off the longer she stared at him. He knew he was making no sense at all and not getting through to her. "You're talking loud enough for the both of us, ain'tcha?" she said. "You're an odd bird not making much sense with all that chatter, you know?"

"Ok, yeah, it got away from me," said the Doctor. "That's not the point. The point is…"

"This place is expanding without a draft, like a little wooden boy who can't stop his chin from growing when he's lying."

"No! No!" The Doctor shouted. "You know I don't really understand why everyone has such a problem with my chin! It makes no sense at all! You on the other hand get to be a ginger, but you're so diminutive with your shortness."

Jenny scoffed and stood. "So you don't have any problems with being a big bulbous chinned college professor wearing a suit and cravat designed by a Victorian pouf, but you have problems with my being a short person!"

"First of all, I am no college professor, I'm the Doctor," he said, hands clasped behind his back. "Secondly, it's certainly not designed by Oscar Wilde, it's just something I wore after spending some time in Victorian London. And thirdly, it's a bow tie, not a cravat. Bow ties are cool."

She laughed hysterically. "If you're a doctor, why wear a bow tie? Bow ties are not cool, they're so square and dorky."

He grunted softly and pointed a finger at her. "You're forgetting, I'm the Doctor, not a toy for the drapes like you. I'm far worse than the squares."

"Mmm-hmm," she said, blowing another bubble and not paying any attention. The more the Doctor shouted, the bigger the bubblegum bubble expanded. At about two and a half inches in diameter, the Doctor stopped shouting at her and paid close attention to her gum.

"No, stop right there."

Jenny couldn't speak, for she thought it rude with a mouthful.

The Doctor peered in and whispered, "So that's what was missing."

Jenny pulled her tongue back to bite down on the gum back to normal size. When she could talk again, she said, "What was?"

"There's one way in and one way out, unless this place is punctured," he said. "This white room that seems to go on forever, it's like a bubble, a great big white time bubble. It will continue to expand for a while until…"

He stretched his arms out and clapped his hands together, making a huge banging sound.

"It implodes," said Jenny.

"Precisely," said the Doctor. "All it takes is one pin prick to it or for something to rip right through it from the inside and it will collapse. The only question is where the weak spot of the wormhole is, then?"

He continued to fiddle with the screwdriver settings until Jenny made an inference. "Maybe it's been sealed, because normally when it comes to bubbles, they're sealed off sometimes to keep anything from getting in or out."

He jabbed the dull end of the sonic on the floor a couple times. "No, no, no. Time bubbles are never sealed off from anyone. If anyone had a box, a blue box probably, that person could hack into that bubble and get in and out through the skin of this dimension. Granted, that kind of thing is never tolerated when you time travel. My box had some sort of fit when I tried going to a smaller universe. She didn't like it and still doesn't."

"Indeed you are correct," a woman's voice boomed over their heads. She sounded part Caribbean by her tone in the accent she spoke, but neither Jenny nor the Doctor could see her face from which she was speaking. "Welcome, time travelers. You are most welcome inside my fortress."

Startled, neither of them said anything. The Doctor wondered if this was a female version of the House from that bubble universe he spoke of, around the time he finally put a face and a voice to the soul of his beloved Tardis.

"Now that I have brought you here by your free will, I shall remain here to entertain you," the voice continued. "Or perhaps the other way 'round, for you shall entertain me."

In a small voice, the Doctor said, "What do you want? To frighten us, eh?"

"Oh, no, I never intend to scare anyone," said the invisible ghost lady. "I only intended to make your innermost wishes come true, for that is my one true delight. Now that you are here to entertain me, if I may ask, what is it that you wish for before I kill you both?"

Jenny stood back and muttered to the Doctor, "You answer her, go on."

The Doctor stepped aside and looked at her in scorn. "Me? Why do I have to answer?"

"I'm scared enough already!" exclaimed Jenny. "And you seem to be the one with all the answers, teacher boy."

"Real Time Lords don't feel fear," said the Doctor. "You still have much to learn about Time Lords, you're not even close."

"What makes you the boss about being a Time Lord?" said Jenny, raising an eyebrow.

The Doctor peered down at her in scorn. "A Time Lord is so much more than what you are. You are an echo of me, and that's all you really are, an echo. There's a shared loneliness, a shared suffering when you're a Time Lord. The largest Time War that spanned the universe, the ongoing battle, those we have lost, a code, a history, an order… You don't just forget something like that."

Jenny scoffed. "You sound like my dad. You're no Time Lord."

"Yes I bloody am!" the Doctor shouted.

"Sure you are!" shouted Jenny in disdain. "If you really are a Time Lord, my father would still be here and alive. For all I care, my dad ran off on me! He's dead because of me!"

At the last part of that rant, particularly on the way she emphasized the word dead, the Doctor flung himself in front of her and grabbed her shoulders again, staring her in the face. "No! Don't you dare think that because he's right in front of you," he said softly.

"What makes you say that?" she said.

"Come on, you don't actually believe I never searched for you?" he continued. "You know it's me. I took your pulse. Two heartbeats, same as me, and you know it too. How could I possibly forget you, Jenny, from planet Messaline?"

Her father took her hand and placed it over his chest. Holding her hand felt natural and akin to him, even though he entirely missed her growing up and her first regeneration cycle, however many she's had. He knew he regenerated since the last time they talked, when he held her in his arms for the last time. He told her to hold on a little longer, that she would be able to travel the universe and see new worlds and do lots and lots of running. But if she regenerated into this young red haired female embodiment, she had the proper Time Lord ability he'd thought she never had.

"You're my daughter, and we've only just got started," he said as she took her dying breaths. "You're gonna be great, you're gonna be more than great. You're gonna be amazing, do you hear me, Jenny?"

On the last statement, she died in his arms. He marched up to the man who shot her, General Cobb, and picked up his gun. "I never would," he quietly bellowed in the General's ear that day. The anguish of knowing that his genetically generated daughter was murdered by accident stung him too much, he couldn't help but wonder if she regenerated or not. So he spent years searching for her, between leaving Donna Noble behind without her memory of him, and gallivanting with little Amelia Pond, and in between the years of finding Melody Pond who would one day become his wife River Song, up until the day she was due to kill him at Lake Silencio in America. Even when he traveled with Clara, he spent those in between times searching for his daughter with no such luck. It had all come flooding back to him.

Instead, it didn't come to her. Jenny recoiled from him, shook her head and laughed. "You are so full of it, you are! Very clever!"

"Enough!" the overhead voice boomed. "I see the two of you have some unfinished business, but I am running out of time. And you are evading my question. What is it that you wish for before I kill you?"

The Doctor stepped forward, looking up and examining the high ceiling. "Wishes?" he repeated to her. "Why would I wish for something when you're the one who's trapped us here?"

"I am all powerful, sir," said the voice. "I grant the wishes of others and bestow my power of the great ones to make connections with The Other Side."

"Oooh, 'The Other Side', I'd love a peek at that," said the Doctor. "Genuinely, I love the way that sounds. What exactly is The Other Side? And who are these other people you allow access to make these connections of yours?"

"They're not really mine to make, sir," the voice said, echoing from all sides of the endless room. "I give them my gifts at an early age, but soon I shall transcend into another form and become queen. Then the heavens will break as I shower upon those who've sinned."

"Yeah, you give me the creeps," Jenny said. "I've had enough of this. I just want to get out of here."

"Is that your wish?" the voice called back.

The Doctor fired his sonic screwdriver towards the ceiling, scanning it. A second later, he said, "Jenny, I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?" she said. "She asked us what we wished for, and if we wished our way out, we'd be free in a mo and ask questions later."

"No, you do that and we're both dead," said the Doctor. "You know the old saying, 'Be careful what you wish for'? I've just scanned the ceiling, or what looks like a ceiling but it's not. It's a cloud. We're inside a cloud right now. And there's a hole somewhere here, the most quiet and peaceful part of this cloud, or the eye of the storm. That's the only place where we can escape without any damage."

"So, you're saying there is a way out, but why can't we leave yet?"

"We're inside a tropical storm, Jenny. Right above us, or below us, is the ocean, and who knows how dangerous it is down there. It's not safe, and she did say she was going to kill us anyway."

"Good point," said Jenny. "But how are we in a bubble universe inside a tropical storm?"

"I don't know," said the Doctor. "But my theory is whatever the bubble universe is causing, the thunderstorm is what surrounds it. And the more it gets closer to the earth, the closer it gets to wiping out the planet and perhaps a great chunk of the universe."

"Yeah, I figured that," Jenny mused. "It'll snap as soon as it gets too close. Pop goes the weasel." She stuck her gum behind her ear and turned her attention to the ghost voice. "Don't take anything I said to heart, love. You said you wanted entertainment, right? What better entertainment is there than watching the two of us running to find an exit?"

"Ah, I see," said the voice. "That could be arranged very well. I can find a way to toy with the likes of you. Very well, then, I have turned off the safeguards. Go ahead and run along home."

With that, The Doctor and Jenny took off running, hand in hand.


	6. Night Five: Drunkenly Drugged

Night Five:

Drunkenly Drugged

The atmosphere never changed much since the hazy cloud inside the classroom that the hermit made vanish with his wand. At least that's what Claire's students thought it was. No matter what the strange pen was, Claire insisted on dragging him to a secret, secluded place to find out exactly what he was.

She knocked on the door. The stray hermit from her class stood next to her silently. "This is a safe hideout and they know me here," Claire turned and said to him. "So try to keep everything to yourself."

The small window at the top of the door slid open to reveal a pair of eyes looking down at her. "Password?" said the doorman.

"Oliver Twist went half seas over for some bearcat," answered Claire.

The square peep hole slammed shut. Some rattling of locks came from the door and the doorman opened the door and let them both inside.

The atmosphere was foggy, but not as clouded as it was outside, mainly due to the amount of cigar and cigarette smoke. A bar sat at the back of the room where a huddled group of dark skinned men sat on their stools sipping their drinks. Dark skinned women smoked from long-sticked filters with their feathered headbands drooping to the side and a group of showgirls danced on the stage next to a man playing a piano. The maitre'd standing at the main entrance approached Claire and her disheveled guest.

"Welcome to the Rose Water Club, where the party's hot til sunup," she said in her southern drawl. "If you follows me, please…"

She grabbed a couple of menus and led them to a table in the front most corner. As they were seated, she said, "Can I get drinks for y'all?"

The hermit glanced at the menu's front and back and looked up at her in confusion. "You don't happen to have soda, do you?"

"Two mimosas, please," Claire said.

"Yes'm. Your waiter will be right with you," said the maitre'd before she left.

The hermit looked up from his menu. "So this is a speakeasy," he said. "I have to hand it to you, Miss Oscar, a pub during prohibition is definitely a step up from that restaurant of robots in Victorian London."

"What?" Claire said.

"Nothing. I'm just wondering if your boyfriend P.E. teacher is around somewhere."

"For your information, my boyfriend is not a teacher; he's a musician."

"So what are mimosas anyway?" said the hermit who called himself John Smith. "Are they some sort of juice mixed with some fizzy alcohol or some such nonsense? I think I want to stay sober for this sort of thing, if that's all right."

"Are you going to tell me who you are or not?" Claire said, trying to refocus the conversation. "You could at least explain to me what happened in class today."

"Who made you the boss on this whole thing?" said John Smith. "I kept telling you to stay out of my business and go back to your perfect pudding brained life. The longer you stay anywhere near me, the more you are in danger."

"Danger don't scare me, occupational hazard here."

The waiter came by in his tuxedo and placed two full glasses of mimosa at the table. As Claire thanked him and took her first drink, the showgirls left and the speakeasy's master of ceremonies came to the stage.

"Hey, how are y'all feelin' tonight?" he began on his microphone, the applause following him. When the applause died down, he said, "We got ourselves a good ol' southern blues act for y'all following that piece of treasure… They from right here, born an' bred in N'Orleans, Louisiana, so please welcome the Kid and Little Louie Band! Come on down!"

More applause erupted through the room as the curtains opened to reveal a brass band of clarinet, trombone, trumpet, sousaphone, and only one drummer playing a snare. Out in front was Claire's boyfriend Louis, holding a shiny but slightly beaten up trumpet. He waved at her and grinned with his biggest smile as Claire waved back. John Smith only stared at him as if he'd seen him before, but Claire snapped him out of it when she nudged his arm. That was when Louis began to sing.

"I went down to the Saint James Infirmary… I found my baby there… She was stretched out on a long white table/ so calm and cool…"

The song was slow and soulful as the rest of the band played it with such sadness. The way Louis sang was gravelly and rough with a dark tone. John Smith took one look at him, then looked at Claire, who was swaying in her seat to the sound. Looking back, when Louis lifted his trumpet and began to play, it hit him almost close to shouting it.

"Louis Armstrong!" John gasped. "_The_ Louis Armstrong of the King Oliver Creole Jazz Band! Satchmo, Dippermouth! This is the year when everything was falling into place for him, when he's about to get his big break in 1922 with his first big hit 'West End Blues'! How could I forget that?"

"Because it hasn't happened," said Claire, looking back at him with a wince. "It's February, 1921. How could you possibly know about King Oliver giving him a big break when he hasn't even sent him a telegram?"

John paused. "Oh, I didn't think about that first. You still don't remember me, do you? No, shut up, skip that part. How do you know Louis Armstrong?"

"Nobody calls him that," said Claire. "Everyone calls him Dipper or Little Louie. Why do you keep asking me if I remember you when I told you I don't? I've never met you!"

"No, this is more important," John said, his hand on hers and leaning in close to her. "Who is he to you?"

Looking around to make sure no one was listening, she said, "My boyfriend."

Sitting back in his chair and sighing, he said, "Oh, Clara… I thought I knew you better than this."

"What is that supposed to mean?" she said.

Suddenly, the drums picked up in rhythm to almost a fast march, the band jumping in moments later. Louis led the band with his trumpeting melody of "Didn't He Ramble" and more people got up to the floor in front of the stage to dance the Charleston. Claire took one last long sip of her mimosa when another man gave her his hand and asked her to dance. Following her abrupt departure to the crowded dance floor, another woman dashed to his side and asked him if he would also like to join her. But out the corner of her eye, Claire noticed the old man wanted no part of dancing with anyone and just stayed behind to watch the crowded commotion.

Women cackled in laughter. Drinks were spilled anywhere. Dizzy became the atmosphere of the whole speakeasy, the concoction of beer, wine, sweat, and music pumping through so many heels. Claire danced away the blues in her heels, forgetting everything, the nightmares, the strange hermit she brought with her, the psychotic woman Louis used to be married to before he met her, the ghosts in the mist… She even forgot about who she was in that dizzying moment before it all came to a screeching halt when the music ended.

Applause came from all sides and Claire could hardly breathe. She laughed for no reason, as if camouflaging her fears, while stumbling to the bar stool. After taking a deep breath, she sat down. The spins continued no matter what. As the band played the next song, a slower ballad about the pale moon and the peaceful darkness of the night in the south, she steadied herself at the bar, both hands holding on. She closed her eyes. The room was still spinning with all the candle lights swirling together with the dimness of the room and the colorful bottles of alcohol lining the wall. It didn't feel safe to stay there any longer, not because of the police looking out for people buying and selling cheap booze against the Constitutional Amendment, but because she felt a prickling at the back of her neck. She took a deep breath with her eyes closed tight. The room was filled with cackling laughter and excrements of cigar and cigarette smoke. She took another deep breath. Everything felt too tight, including her head down to her dress and shoes, as if something was compressing her. She thought of the computer screen again. Her heart quickened. She swore she couldn't remember the password, even if she did know it.

"Claire," someone breathed.

She whirled around shakily. The old man she sat next to earlier was encroaching on her again, but this time with terror in his eyes. She didn't speak.

"Tell me what happened to you," John Smith said.

"What?" she said, the dizzying spell intensifying.

"I need you to tell me what's wrong," he said. "Something is not supposed to happen here."

"When it's sleepy time down south," Louis crooned. He looked over his shoulder at his girl and kept singing as the smile dashed from his face. "The steamboats up the river are comin and goin'… splashin' the night away…"

Claire's focus began to drift. "You're not supposed to be dating Louis Armstrong, for he marries somebody else," the hermit named John continued. "You're not Claire Oscar, I know it. You've just forgotten. You are Clara Oswald, my Clara Oswald. We travel in time and space together, and your life is in danger. That's why I need to know why you've forgotten me all of a sudden. I need to know how long this has been going on, how many times you have forgotten, how much information has been deleted, and why you're here. Tell me. Just this once, Clara, just tell me."

After staring at him long enough, she said, "Who's Clara? What makes her so important to you, anyway?"

She stopped before she could get anything else out and fainted.

* * *

When Claire opened her eyes, all she could see was a flashing green light that had a buzzing noise with it. She heard a click and muffled voices. Then a pair of faces came into view. It was morning from the hazed sunlight coming in through her window. And there was Louis, standing next to her and holding her hand, and the man holding the pointy thing with the green light was John Smith.

"Hey, babes," Louis said, placing a hand on her forehead. "How you feelin'?"

"What happened to me?" she said.

"I'll take that question," said John. "In short, you passed out last night."

Claire sat up in bed slowly. "It wasn't like I had too much to drink, really." She glanced around and realized she was in her own shared apartment with Louis, their secret hideout they had together, so long as they never told their landlord.

"That's precisely what happened," John continued. "Something was in your drink last night, some kind of narcotic compound that affects your memory and your dreams. I've been trying to place it this whole time, but everything's still a bit fuzzy."

The dizzying feeling in her head returned and she began to feel a hot flush coming on. She sat back on the bed as John continued to examine her. "So, what, you're a doctor as well as a chemist?" she said.

"Something like that," he said. He put a hand to her forehead. "You have a fever. You're warm. You should probably lie down."

"No, I'm late for work, the children…" Claire trailed off as her vision blurred.

"You need to stay out of the streets for a while," said John. "Don't go outside."

"Why can't she go outside?" asked Louis.

"There's something in the atmosphere that's interfering with her brain chemistry," John said. "The longer she's exposed to the toxins in the clouds and the air, the hazier her memory gets. She needs to retain her memory for as long as possible so she can remember everything she's lost."

"She's losing her memory?" Louis said.

"Lost. Past tense," John said. "She's probably suffering from some type of amnesia or dissociative fugue, with just a hint of something to cover it up. She has a backstory on file to replace her real one, but it's a fake story she either made up or was engraved in her brain when she came here. But in her real life, she's not your girlfriend. She's a traveler, like me."

"Should I get my credentials?" Claire quipped, sitting up again. "Because I really don't see why you would say something like that to my partner."

"You, stay in bed, now," John said, pushing her back down with his finger.

"But I…" she began.

He snapped his fingers. "No talking. Don't even think, it's annoying." He turned and left her bedside, pushing the same electric pen inside his jacket pocket. As one final remark to Louis, he said, "Make sure she doesn't leave the apartment, under any circumstances. She can't be outside. And don't let her have any kind of alcohol to drink. The best way to starve the demons is to stay sober."

"Yessir," said Louis. And with that, the hermit was gone.

"Really, what happened?" Claire said a little groggily.

"You sorta had one of them dizzy spells," Louis said, kneeling to her. "It's probably nothin' unlike what he says. You is pretty warm and you should get some rest. Soon as I saw you fall, I stopped the music and ran to you to make sure you was ok. I was worried about you, is all. So I took you home."

"You don't think anybody saw us or cared, do you?"

He held her hand. "No, baby. You worries too much. Go get some sleep, you need it, dahhlin."

He kissed her on the forehead and padded down the hall. She sat up and called him back before he could reach the front door. "Louis?"

"Yeah, babes?" he said.

"You don't believe a single thing he said, do you?" Claire asked. "You know, about me not being your girlfriend."

Louis went back to her side and said, "As far as anyone knows, you're the most beautiful girl in N'orleans. And it don't matter where you go and who you meet, you always be my baby. I loves you, Claire. I always has."

He kissed her. When she looked back at him, she knew she'd always belong to him, no matter what kind of law or person separated them. It was a promise.

"I love you too," she said.

As soon as he got up and left, Claire fell back on the bed and went to sleep, thinking there was nothing to stop her from getting what she needed done. It was a Saturday, so she was a little relieved to remember she didn't have to work that day. But she resided that fever or no, she would get up after her nap and return to her investigating side she missed for too long.


	7. Night Six: When it's Sleepy Time

Night Six:

When It's Sleepy Time Down South

Something roared in the blank distance. It sounded close. Was it close? Jenny kept glancing behind her as she ran alongside the Doctor. She contemplated splitting up to find the hole. Her judgment got the better of her. That wasn't a good plan.

"Don't look over there," the Doctor shouted, nearly out of breath. "Concentrate on running!"

Just as they heard another crashing noise, Jenny slipped and fell down a crevice. She screamed as the floor took her down, until the Doctor caught her with his free arm. Kneeling over the edge, the crevice grew into a hole as the Doctor gripped Jenny's wrist. "I've got you," he gasped. "Come on, hurry. Don't look down."

Jenny strained her other arm and grabbed the edge of the hole. Looking past her shoulder, she could see the hole getting deeper and wider. A low, chilling hum sounded from below, loud enough to make her inner ears vibrate. She couldn't look there anymore. Grimacing, she pushed her arm firmly, climbing against the new cliff as the Doctor pulled her other arm back. As soon as Jenny's midsection was over the edge, she yelled, "If only I could do push-ups, this would be so much easier!" She rolled herself over the edge and landed safely on the ground, her upper arms still sore. Both Jenny and the Doctor panted in relief, their backs against the ground.

The Doctor looked at her. "I'm guessing the gravity here is nearly Earth normal."

"If it was," Jenny remarked. "We wouldn't be stuck in a cloud. Didn't that lady say this place was going to rain somewhere?"

"Valid point," said the Doctor. "But how? Where?"

"Who?" said Jenny.

"No, not who, but where," the Doctor reiterated.

"No, who are you to me?" Jenny said. She sat up on her knees. "You never told me your name, neither did you ever tell me how you came to be here."

The Doctor chuckled. "Spoilers."

"What spoilers?"

He stood and said, "It's best you not know right now and just run." He pulled her to her feet.

"Not know what?"

Instead of answering her, he yanked on her right arm and dragged her into a run. "You're really making a habit of this with the running thing," she shouted.

"Best do a bit of catch up," he shouted back. "And I never liked ketchup."

As they ran, the floor began to move. It bent outwards between them to split up the Doctor from Jenny, making them run in the opposite directions of the other. They stopped running and began to slide down the incline just made, their screams echoing throughout. Then the floor bent inwards to make a ditch, making both the Doctor and Jenny fall back, screaming, until they both slammed into each other.

Jenny rubbed the back of her head, knowing she hit something, either the floor or the Doctor's head. "The next thing you know, the floor's going to turn into ocean waves, before the day is done."

"Don't give her any ideas," said the Doctor, also massaging his shoulder.

Something hissed. The floor leveled off. A blood red cloud formed and billowed towards them. The bright whiteness that surrounded them darkened ahead. A face formed that of a woman. She gave a low howl before she answered. "Run all you like, if that be your wish out of here. But heed this message, this world is mine for the taking and you are done for."

The face disappeared as the cloud rumbled and lurched forward toward them both. The Doctor took one glance at Jenny as Jenny said, "What was all that about? What's happening?"

The Doctor's face went white with fear as he seized Jenny's arm and shouted, "Get the hell out of here!"

They took off running in the other direction as the red cloud drew nearer. Jenny gasped for breath and words. "What is that red cloud? Is that the way the ghost lady is trying to materialize?"

"It can't be," the Doctor answered, still panting. "I just hope I'm wrong, but it seems to be a sentient toxic cloud, highly toxic to two hearted races, like Time Lords."

"Like us, you mean," said Jenny.

"Exactly."

"So what would happen if it were to get too close to say, a human?"

"Humans can detox better in a matter of days, Time Lords take weeks," the Doctor said, breaking a sweat. He nearly tripped on his shoelace, noticing his boots were coming undone. He tried to ignore it and tread carefully. "If you inhale any part of that cloud, it starts to take away your brains and memories, all of it. The first thing it'll do is knock you out for hours before it starts to take control of your mind and your body. That's why it's very important to just run and don't breathe it in."

Jenny panted. "If only Lenny was here, he could hold his breath for a real long time."

"Who?" the Doctor asked. Suddenly, he tripped again and fell over. Jenny gave a yelp and pulled on his arm to stand up. Instead, he got up and began tying his shoelace.

The cloud drew closer. "Hurry up! We've gotta go now!"

"Just a sec!" the Doctor yelled. He made a quick job and tied his shoe tight, then took off running again. But the cloud was only feet away when they took off again, and the cloud began to form a finger, then a hand, and then a full forearm, stretching out to the pair of them. It grabbed Jenny's ankle, which she fell over with a piercing cry. The Doctor reached out and pulled Jenny to her feet, only she protested, "Just go! Leave me here!"

"I am not leaving my daughter!" the Doctor screamed. "Not you, never again!"

"No! Let go of me," Jenny shouted. "I'm not important!"

"Yes you are!" he shouted at her. "I'm the Doctor and you are my daughter! We're the last two Time Lords in existence and I'm not leaving without you!"

Jenny stared at him. Her ears must have deceived her. The floor was now stretching and bending in on itself like a makeshift wall closing in. The Doctor tried to pull her back from the edge, but too late. The cloud caved in on both of them and the vapors consumed them. The Doctor tried holding his breath for as long as possible, for Jenny was already too far gone, but there was no escaping it now. As the Doctor fell to his knees and dropped unconscious in the deep dark red mist, he held onto Jenny's hand and gripped tightly until he lost all feeling of his body.

Before blacking out, Jenny took one last look at the Doctor and said, "Dad?"

* * *

It was nearly dark when Claire stirred. She looked at the clock on the wall and didn't seem to care about it. She got up and made her way to the closet and got changed into her dress and shoes. With that, she resolved to start investigating in her area, hoping she wouldn't run into that crazy woman Louis used to be married to… or that strange hermit buffoon again.

Streetcars and Model As lined the streets, driving this way and that. The sky was as hazy as it was before, but nearly dark enough so no one could see it. Claire kept her black hat with veil on to avoid any encounters with strangers. She took a cab all the way to the outskirts of the French Quarter, where no one of African descent, not even her boyfriend, was allowed to live there. As soon as she made it to one of the cafés, she was greeted by her old friend Marcie, who was in her flapper's finest of gold dress and a feathered headband.

"Claire! Of all the places, I thought you'd never drop by," Marcie exclaimed in her southern belle voice before giving Claire a hug.

"Marcie, so good to see you," Claire said, embracing her friend and standing back.

"So when are you going to introduce me to your boyfriend?" Marcie beckoned. "Is he here or is he coming around?"

"It's just me for the night, Marcie," Claire said.

"Is he on a bender?"

"No, he's just got another show tonight. You know how musicians are."

"So he's a musician! You could have just told me that. Do you wanta sit down?"

"Yes."

The maitre d' showed them to a table and took their order to get a couple of beignets with a coffee and tea.

"You never told me his name," Marcie said.

"I thought I told you it's none of your business," Claire replied, knowing Marcie liked to rub her nose in other people's lives. "How is work going?"

Marcie scoffed. "Disaster," she said in a low demeaning tone. "The detectives round here are trying to catch this Axman guy who keeps offing families. It's times like this I don't miss a good ol' robbery case. These are dangerous times, Miss Claire."

"And yet you're not wearing any tin corsets and neither am I," said Claire. "They would be too constricting anyway."

"I know that," said Marcie. "But how do you know you'll be safe from all the devils lurking around town? I asked you if you wanted to come live with me here in the French Quarter, but you keep going in and out of dark places. I'm wondering if someone's been treating you well over there so you won't be having anyone feeding you bullets."

"I'm Jake, Marcie. There's nothing to worry about. I'm more worried about you and how you're holding up."

Her friend sat back in her chair and folded her arms. "There's more than just a serial killer and criminal chases than you should know of."

Claire leaned in to hear. "Like what?"

"I really shouldn't say," said Marcie. "It's confidential, top secret private stuff between me and the private eyes."

"Well, you really shouldn't know all this stuff because you're only a receptionist," Claire said in a discerning tone. She smiled to indicate she was only teasing. They both laughed as the waiter came back with their drinks and pastries.

"Well, I know I shouldn't be telling you this and I might get in trouble for telling anyone outside of the office, but there is something strange going on around these parts," Marcie began, taking her first sip of coffee.

"Do tell," Claire said, stirring in sugar and milk in her tea.

"Ever notice anything weird in the sky lately?" said Marcie.

"A variety of things, like faces and fog," Claire said. "What are you beating at?"

"Every time I try bringing those weather changes up at the office, no one wants to hear about it," Marcie continued in a hushed tone. She gave Claire a finger to come closer as if to tell a secret. "But there have been many disappearances linked to the faces in the clouds. There was one man who went down an alleyway near Canal Street and turned up missing. The police filed a report at least nine months ago, but turned it away like they forgot about it when the Axman hit. Every now and then we get these disappearances, and it's every time the weather changes to cool, dry fog."

"Was there a disappearance yesterday?" Claire asked, taking another sip of tea.

"Yes, a man by the name of James Fortser turned up missing Sunday night," said Marcie. "His wife said he was a happy man and there was no trouble at home, but that night, he went out to the corner store to buy some bread and never came back. Then the weather changed Monday afternoon."

"James the magician," Claire mumbled to herself, knowing that the magician who was supposed to be at school for Magic Show Friday was a no-show because he disappeared with the others. "Were there any other victims you think the clouds claimed?"

"Why, just a week ago, Miss April Chambers went missing from the library."

"The librarian?"

"Mmm-hmm. There was a strange storm brewin' one night last Tuesday night as she was going home, and the head librarian didn't see her come in the next day. There was no sign of struggle or a sign that she made it home at all, but there was no trace of her anywhere else."

"Did any of the victims turn up?" Claire said.

"Not usually," said Marcie, sipping her coffee. "There was one man who turned up, Reggie Gower, but he was dead in an alleyway by a dumpster, completely white from head to toe, no bruises, blood, or trauma left on him. He pretty much died of shock. It's like he saw a ghost and the fright scared him so much it killed him."

As she took a bite of her beignet, Claire's eyes widened in shock. Someone dying of shock or fright normally never happened in New Orleans. She gulped the bread down and said, "Do you know of anyone I could talk to as far as these mysterious disappearances?"

"I don't know, dahhlin'," Marcie answered. "The best I could tell you is that you'd have to talk to someone who talks to spirits, but I know you don't believe in that stuff."

"True," Claire said, sipping her tea. "But I'll give it a shot anyway. You never know."

When they finished, Marcie said, "If you ever feel like comin' out tonight to see me, I'm going on a little riverboat trip with my fiancé on the Laura Bell. Whenever you can come see us for dinner and drinks, we'll be there. You can also bring your boyfriend, if you want."

"I'm sure he would be too busy, but I'll try to make it," Claire said and was on her way.

The sky remained dark, only lit by the streetlamps and the many headlights of new automobiles running back and forth through the street. Some man bumbled down the avenue, crying out his wary advertisement: "Come one, come all, folks! All y'all fancy women and heavy gamblers come on out to Lincoln Park for a good time! Tell all yo friends! If you likes raggedy music, you can dance any kind of way!"

Claire ignored his wily cries and continued to the other side of New Orleans until she heard a hooting. Up in a tree by the streetlamp closest to her was an owl. It turned its head and looked down on her with its glossy eyes. She took one glance at it before another owl sat in the tree, on the second branch above the first owl, and began hooting as well. Claire thought this to be strange behavior for these birds of prey, for them to be landing in the same tree and paying each other no mind. It was also unlikely to see owls around these parts of the deep south, she thought.

Then someone screamed. Another cloud formed around a single woman as people ran for cover. From a distance, Claire could see a figure forming over the woman's head. It bore the face of an Easter Island head, but bearing enormous teeth and careening its wispy torso through the center of the cloud. It grew wings and hissed. It started to turn bright red and later a dark carnelian. It screeched that same sound in Claire's dream. She immediately hit the ground running, in any way she could get away from the creature.

She turned left into an alleyway. Then another right into another main street. People bustled through the sidewalks and car horns honked. She looked behind her; the creature was gone. But she wondered what happened to that poor woman that the spirit creature absorbed. She went back into the alleyway and glanced around the corner enough to remain unseen. There, the cloud billowed and rumbled with thunder and electricity from the inside, the woman's screams stunned into silence. The creature had disappeared and now the cloud turned red. As it crawled back, leaving the woman's lifeless body behind, Claire rushed to the poor woman lying there in the street. Her face was now all pale, completely washed over in white like the others Marcie had mentioned, but it always backed away like nothing happened. And now the street was deserted, with no police officers to call or anyone to call for help. The woman was dead, there was another corpse to bury, red clouds just appearing out of nowhere making the owls flock into trees were enough, and yet no one bothered to call the police or ask questions about any of it.

The clouds were looking for something, going from one street to the other, Claire mused. Or maybe they already found it, depending on how far they've reached and how long they've stayed. She remembered the old poem she kept hearing from the voodoo lady she met in the alleyway one night: "In the low cloud the spirits come alive/ breathe them in they nab you to the Other Side." It was scary, her first time there, for she was normally cautious about going up dark alleyways. She never told Louis; she never even believed it herself, for she thought it was all hokum hoodoo. But this time, this one time watching that poor lady die, she almost believed it. All she needed now was more answers to the right questions.


	8. Night Seven: Ghosts on the Bayou

Night Seven:

Ghosts on the Bayou

The sharp wheezing noise was close. Claire recognized the sound of creaky engines followed by a thud. She followed where the noise came from, tracing it back to outside Lincoln Park. People lined the long tall fence to enter. Some were shouting, a few couples started kissing each other, and a prize fight between two burly men was beginning just inside the gateway. A gargantuan hot air balloon sat behind the stage, a perfect getaway for a couple of felons wanting to run away from the police. Claire oscillated around on the pavement and dirt, searching for the engines that were making that big wheezing clatter. But there was nothing, nothing she could plainly see that was out of place… except for a large, tall police box in royal blue, wedged inside an alleyway across from the park.

There wasn't a safe place for this particular box whatsoever. If anyone down south by a speakeasy could see it, a riot would break out in the middle of the street waiting for the cops to come by and break it up, clapping people in irons. Someone could get the wrong impression of this blue box, anyhow. But Claire was intrigued by it, not by the words scrawled at the top, but at its color and shape. This box was merely made of wood, all blue as it was in the dream. She remembered a few segments of her nightmare in detail: the frightened woman on the ground, the creature coming to eat her soul, the blue painted wood she was reaching out for safety, and then the scary voodoo woman she saw before she waked.

She thought of this for a second, piecing how it all fit together. There had to be something inside of that box worth dying for. As she wandered closer toward it, she was suddenly interrupted by the sounds of percussion, blaring horns, and a stringed instrument. She turned.

"This next song is called, 'La Fille Impossible'," someone announced. "Hit it, boys!"

There was the old hermit, in the same ugly suit as he wore in class the other day, on the stage playing a funny looking stringed instrument she could have sworn was a guitar. And it was loud, screeching louder than tires and industrial work in a factory.

The crowd on the lawn roared. The brass musicians played a melody, the clarinet wailing and the hermit taking a back seat and chugging a steady blues chord line on guitar. Claire's mouth hit rock bottom. What were those black things on that mad hermit's face? She inched inside the park to get a closer look. They were glasses, all right, but completely blackened as if he didn't need to see out of them. He would be completely blind with them on in the dark winter's night! But the way the band was cooking, it was hardly winter at all.

Louis finished his line of melody on trumpet and looked to the hermit to reply in musical form. The hermit stood and strummed his guitar before letting loose and finger picking up and down. Dumbfounded by this, Claire came closer. The stringed instrument wailed and reverberated in her ears as John Smith strummed the blues. When she was as close to the stage as possible, the hermit locked his gaze on her, strummed an interlude back at Louis, and let Louis take over with a trumpet solo. John looked down, dropping his sunglasses to catch Claire's eye as he continued a continuous guitar lick through the song, then put a finger up to push the shades back on.

Claire mouthed, "What are you doing up there?"

John Smith looked down again. "What?" he yelled. "I can't hear you!"

Claire yelled again, "I said what are you doing there?"

"Not now, Clara, I'm busy," he said. He piped up the guitar again in the middle of the solo before coming back down to a steady palm mute for the clarinet solo.

"Are you completely mental?" she yelled. "What are you doing here?"

"Playing a gig!" the hermit shouted. "How do you like my guitar? No, that's not the question. What are you doing out here? You should be in bed!"

"Well I just saw something that may spark your interest," said Claire.

The hermit continued playing without making face to face contact with her. "You, about turn, bed, now. Nothing you've seen could in the least bit interest me."

"What about the ghost around the park gardens?"

"What ghost?"

"The ghost that brought along a peck of owls!"

The hermit stopped playing when he heard those words and dropped his glasses. He knelt down to where Claire stood and looked in her eyes. "I'm handling it," he said.

"What?"

"I said that was all my work," said the hermit John Smith. "I've recruited some owls to look for any suspicious movements. I'm handling it myself, there's nothing for you to worry about. Now you go straight back to your little flat and take a nap."

"Recruited _owls_?" said Claire.

"Yes, Clara, I speak many languages, including owl," he said sharply. "Now why don't you-"

"Just tell me what is going on here!" she yelled.

"Why would I?" he snapped.

"Because the clouds are turning red, and the ghost that I just saw came from my dream."

The hermit stood back and thought about it. "Hmm, that is interesting enough," he said to himself before snapping himself out of it. "No, under no accounts, Clara, I am playing a gig and you should be in bed sleeping that headache of yours off. You're too sick to be outside."

He stood up again and rejoined his jazz group for the main melody they played before. It continued to escalate into waves of sound and pandemonium, the music swelling as the girls kicked and men danced away their cares with their Charleston styles. It was absolute madness that no one could hear the thunder up ahead or see the lightning flash from the clouds. The sky was already darkened, but dimly lit by the moonlight and the lampposts, which were snuffed out by the cloud cover above the stage. John Smith and Claire looked back up at the sky, frightened it was about to rain on them and ruin the night, but the light of the moon gave a red halo tinge to the sky. The clouds were blood red and looming over them.

As the band crescendoed and ended on a high note, the crowd cheered like they didn't care. Thunder rolled and echoed throughout the park. Some were startled, but they didn't seem to mind. Louis and the band looked up and convened to see if they could do a fast song before the rain came. All the while, John Smith looked up at the clouds in amazement. He put away his sunglasses and took out the same pen he used before in that same class day to scan it.

"It's toxic," he said to himself. He returned to the music group and said, "We've got to leave now. That cloud isn't what you think it is. It's going to kill everyone."

"Hey, man," said the drummer. "We're here to play a gig. We can't just up and leave. You probably can since you white and you not s'posed to be here anyways, but we stayin'."

"It doesn't matter," said John. "One day you'll see past the skin colors and realize that everyone matters like I do. If I'm getting out of here, so are all of you. Everyone needs to leave, now. The sooner everyone gets to safety, the better."

Louis looked up at the sky and back to the hermit. "What about Claire? Is she safe?"

"Oh she's safe for now," he told him.

"I'm right here, Louis!" Claire said, beckoning him.

"Babes!" Louis said, turning around and catching her eye. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to find you," Claire lied. "Don't worry, I'm not that kind of crazy bearcat like you know who."

"Naw, I know what you mean," Louis said. "You shouldn't be here; you might get caught."

"I'm not worried about that," she said. "What is he doing here?"

"He just dropped by to play a few songs during the gig," said Louis. "I never knew he got so much skill. You guys should probably go, though, before another riot breaks out."

The cloud grew thicker and redder by the second. It looked as if it was pushing against the sky and the atmosphere to fight and fall on the park itself. The thunder claps grew louder as the lightning coursed through the cloud, hitting the top curtain of the stage. Out of the lightning, a fire sparked at the foot of the stage and began to spread. The audience screamed and fled the scene, their terror trailing behind in their wake. The rest of the band grabbed what they could as soon as they smelled the scourge of smoke and abandoned the stage, leaving Louis, Claire, and the hermit alone to fend for themselves.

"Quick, I know a way out of here," said the hermit John Smith, and the three of them went towards the gate where the blue box was hidden safely in an alley way.

"You sure this is the right plan?" said Claire.

"Absolutely," he said, running as he carried his guitar on his back. "No, I may or may not be lying to you, depending on which way the Tardis will take us."

Still running, Claire turned to him at the mention of that word. "The what?"

"The Tardis, Clara! It's my spaceship! Why don't you… oh, never mind. You'll figure it out on your own."

Lightning struck at the entrance of Lincoln Park. Flames sprung across the entire fence. The creatures from Claire's dream, the evil grinning phantoms from the red cloud, descended from the sky and hovered above their heads, cackling and screeching as they took each of their victims. Through the streets, it was as if another riot had begun. People ran this way and that, blocking traffic of other big wheeled vehicles, tearing up awnings and marketplace goods in their wake. The three of them stood there in terrified awe, catching their breath.

"There's no way back," said Louis, out of breath and clutching his trumpet. "There has to be another way out."

John Smith turned around and noticed the unharmed hot air balloon in the back of the burning stage. "This way," he said, and they took off running again in the other direction. "Make sure they don't touch you."

When they got to the hot air balloon, they all hopped in as John Smith fired his pen at the sandbags, cutting each of them off. As the balloon drifted off the ground, the phantoms flew toward it, gaining in speed and grazing the bottom of the basket.

"Hold tight," said John Smith.

He fired the pen again at the fire holding the balloon steady in the air as he dropped another sandbag to go higher. As he fired the pen, the flames grew hotter and the balloon accelerated with three times more speed that Louis and Claire clung to the edges of the basket, the pressure pulling them hard. One by one, the phantoms disappeared from reach and the hermit called John lowered his pen to allow the balloon to travel at its normal steady pace. The sky above returned to its normal dark and blackened hue for all the redness of the cloud had dissipated. The winds died down to a slow, natural, warm southern breeze as Claire and Louis steadied themselves and stood carefully inside.

"Well that was a grand idea back there," said Claire. "Let's take off in a big balloon because the hermit said it was better than running through the streets to a good-for-nothing blue box!"

"At least you're coming back to your senses at last," Smith the hermit said. "Don't worry, you'll remember why in no time. You used to be so angry at my ship until you got used to being angry at me rather than her."

"What makes you think I'm coming to my senses?" said Claire. "I am perfectly of sound mind and body—I'll have you know!"

"No you're not, because you have a lot to remember," he said, pointing his pen at her. "You didn't even remember that I had a sonic screwdriver, not just the sunglasses, but who's being honest at this point?"

"Boy, who is you to talk to my girlfriend like that?" Louis said.

"Sorry, Mr. Armstrong, my manners have left me for a good long while," the hermit said. "I'm the Doctor, so let's skip the whole formalities business and get to somewhere safe for now."

"Doctor of what?" said Louis.

"Of many things, can't risk the details," he said. "Now how do we get down from here?"

Claire grasped the back edges of the basket behind her. "You don't look like a doctor," she said. "You're more like a mad evil scientist type."

"Mad, yes," the hermit said. "Evil, no. I'm just a complete idiot who knows what he's doing. Though what boggles me is why you've chosen someone who isn't a pudding brain but looked like your old boyfriend from the future."

"He _is_ my boyfriend!" Claire shouted.

"No he isn't. You can't even remember Danny Pink, do you?"

He searched her face for a while until Claire scoffed and spoke. "Who the hell is Danny Pink? Is he some sort of juggler or entertainment freak at a carnival that I don't know about?"

He suddenly clutched his chest and fell to his knees in agony. "AH!"

Louis put down his trumpet and clutched the old man's arms as he fell. He turned to his girlfriend and said, "What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know, he won't tell me," said Claire.

"You never asked," the old man cried. "It's my right heart, I told you before. Cosmic angst for some reason or other, there's some part of me out there that's in danger, which causes a bicoronary malfunction."

"Bicoronary?" Claire said. "What does that mean, you've got two hearts?"

"Yes!" he said. "I've always had two hearts, you pudding brain!"

"And you say what's causing it is someone else?"

"Another part of me…" He brought his voice down to a low, harsh whisper. "Another me."

"Another you? What do you mean, another you?"

The hermit slowly stood and turned to Claire, gesturing to Louis to release his grip on him. "Imagine all the years behind you, your past, being split up into equal pieces. And in those equal pieces is a different part of you. The way you think, the way you act, the way you dress, and the way you look is always different from what you looked like in the past. And if you had a mode of transportation that could travel in time, you could quite possibly have the danger of running into yourself from your past. Dangerous things happen when paradoxes are involved.

"With me, it's different, though. Because I can regenerate and change my entire body and physique when I can, because I'm an alien from outer space, those dangerous paradoxes of the chance I could run into myself are thinner. When the time demands it, and only then, I can rely on my other selves to help me and vice versa."

Claire gulped the information down with a swallow of her own tongue matter. "You're an alien?" she breathed.

"Yes," said the old man.

"What planet?"

"Gallifrey."

"And what sort of race?"

"Last of the Time Lords."

"Last?"

"I'm the last one of my kind."

"The pen?"

"Sonic screwdriver."

"The black things that were on your face?"

"Sonic sunglasses."

"Why are you here?"

"To save the planet and the rest of American history."

"And to recruit me and Louis?"

"Sort of. Louie's got nothing to do with this, he's part of historical events."

Louis let out a squawk of exclamation, offended by his last statement. "How am I just a piece of history, now?"

"You really want to know, do you?" the old man said. "Hold on to your hat because you are going to be very valuable in the music industry someday. You are a living music legend, or you will be in a couple of years."

"Not in the segregated south, I won't," he said flatly. "White men who can play are everywhere. I can play too, but they won't let me near a good audience. Me and Claire is sick of this town and we is bustin' outta here soon as I find the right riverboat to play. All them good boys get to play those. I just don't know…"

"If what?" he asked. "If you're good enough?"

"King Oliver says I'm good, but he says I don't got melody, nor can I even find it. But he don't understand that I got to leave here soon before my wife gets a hold of me. I was leavin' her anyway and she tried to hurt me and my son Clarence a million ways to Sunday. There's drinkin' and fights and crime, and I just wants to get away from all of it. I can't stay here anymore. That's why Claire here's got me an arrangement to stay with her in secret."

"I'm here to take care of them both, whenever his son comes around too," Claire said, putting her hand on Louis's chest as he put an arm around her. "I didn't even know he had a son until I met his family. All I want to do is help."

The old hermit stood there staring at the pair of them. "Look at you! Listen to you! Do you even hear yourself? You're still no better than he is! No offense, Danny, I mean Satchmo. No, we are landing this thing right now!"

He fired his sonic screwdriver at the flame powering the balloon, which was snuffed out in an instant, but not by the sonic. A gust of wind flew in through the air and another stray ghost-like creature from the red cloud burst in, stealing the flame from the hot air balloon, turning around and breathing the flame back at the balloon's parachuting material. The fabric began to burn. The basket dropped hundreds of feet as Claire and the men screamed. The old hermit fired his sonic screwdriver again, trying to contain the flames so they wouldn't spread, beating the metal against his palm. The basket still fell and the balloon's material scorched.

When the rest of the material had gone to ashes, the basket fell through trees of the swamp below. The three of them braced for impact, clinging to the edge for dear life. At long last, the basket hit the muddy ground in a patch of trees by a river. The burning remnants of the balloon still came down in a quick hurry. The three of them leapt out of the basket out of harm's way and dashed into the river for safety. When the flames were safely out of reach, Claire, Louis, and John Smith came up to the surface for air, their clothes soaked and Louis's trumpet filled with swamp water.

"That's just great! Now what?" said Louis in a huff. "This all because you had to open your mouth and bother my missy!"

"Missy! Where?" the hermit shouted, looking every which way in fear. "She's probably got something to do with this, doesn't she?"

"Oh just shut up!" shouted Claire. She stood up and marched through the water to higher ground, shivering and squelching as she went. "We just got away from danger! We cheated death! Don't ruin that any further!"

As she stormed off, Louis turned to the old man and said, "Thanks a lot, man. Now you got me into another arguin' business with her. I gotta go cool her down until we find ourselves a way out of here."

And he was off, trailing behind Claire to plead with her. As they left to go find another boat, the old man looked back at the mess they left behind, then turned back at the blank, dark sky. It wouldn't be long now, for the clouds above still brewed with anticipation of another attack, gathering and turning all different colors as the phantoms that flew along with them.

He turned in their direction and softly growled, "The sooner I find out who and what you are, the sooner I can get you out of here. All I know is you are not welcome on this planet. After what you did to Clara, I am getting rid of you. You have been warned."

* * *

When the red cloud had gone, Jenny woke up alone. She searched around, looking for the man she was running with, or she could have sworn she traveled with someone, but he wasn't there. She took out her pink sonic gel pen and tapped it against her head. After a quick shake, she read it. Someone had done a memory wipe job on her.

Psychic Toxicity: 42%.

"Oh dear," she breathed out. "The sooner I find the antidote's other half, the better."

She looked around her surroundings at the endless white hall she was stuck in. It seemed to go on and on for miles and miles. Nothing but silence filled the place. Then a rumble sounded. The floor vibrated beneath her Chuck Taylors. She passed it off as nothing but a minor tremor, but it seemed rare for earthquakes to happen in an indoor place that went on for miles and miles. This was a bubble inside a cloud, all right, a time bubble. She knew that going in.

Someone screamed.

It was a man screaming in pain and she knew it. She remembered traveling with someone. "Lenny?" she beckoned through the hall.

The screaming voice answered, "CLARA! Clara, help me!"

Ignoring the call of someone else, Jenny shouted, "I'm coming!"

She took off running immediately.


	9. Night Eight: The Sarah Bell

Night Eight:

The Sarah Bell

Jenny kept on running until her feet burned. Even though she was wearing her sneakers, she knew she'd develop some major blisters soon. She had no idea where she was going for she could never trust her own ears. But she followed her ears anyway, looking for the man who shouted in fear and pain in the distance.

By the time she arrived, the Doctor was on the ground surrounded by pale wires, all fading into the blank white ground before her. Sonic screwdriver in hand, he gripped it tightly, the light flashing and emitting a buzzing sound. Upon seeing her from his lying position, he turned off his screwdriver and leapt to his feet to meet her face.

"Oh, sorry about that, Jenny, I can't believe you found me so quickly," he said.

Jenny looked at him in confusion. "What?"

The Doctor paid no attention and began pacing again. "I didn't necessarily need your help with those mental tentacles that are disintegrating there; pay no attention to those. Now." He rubbed his hands together. "I think I have an idea of what this lady wants to do. She said the heavens will break and she will shower upon those who've sinned. Nutters say shower, but I think she literally meant shower, as in rain."

"You mean reign as in rule," said Jenny. "She said she'd be queen."

"No, rain! Precipitation!" said the Doctor, glancing back to her.

"I'm afraid you've lost me again."

"I know who they are, Jenny," the Doctor said, the eagerness dancing behind him. "They're from another dimension of phantoms, those that live on spaceship energy wake. They follow them from planet to planet feeding off the pure energy and taking hold of the planet they stop at, plaguing like a computer virus."

"I'm sorry, I don't remember-" Jenny said before the Doctor cut her off again.

"The source of it all is right here in this time bubble. And the time bubble is creating all sorts of cosmic energy surrounding this place as it's trying to find my Tardis. It's splitting this universe apart! And the only way that it's doing that is creating a tropical storm, or an anticyclone!"

"Well, well done you," Jenny stated at last. "But that doesn't explain why I can't remember the past few hours."

"Oh, well, that's something that remains to be seen, for I have also lost a bit of my memory as well," said the Doctor, scratching his head. Something groaned in the distance. It grew into a low howl and made the place rumble. The Doctor put his hands on his daughter's shoulders. "Whatever is being thrown at us is disrupting our brain chemistries and disrupting how some short term memory turns into long term."

"The first stage of psychic toxicity," Jenny added.

"Exactly," the Doctor said. "There's got to be a way to reverse the effects so no one gets hurt in the end."

"That's up to you," said the voice again, booming over their heads. "I believe I've had enough fun with you thus far, seeing how much you've caused along the way. Now that I have tired of you both, how about I start to make things interesting?"

"Interesting how?" the Doctor said, his face turned up at the ceiling.

"Perhaps one of you should be leaving at this time," the voice said.

Suddenly, a hole opened in the ground and Jenny began sliding toward it. Try as she might, her feet moved as if operating a conveyor belt still pulling her backward. She screamed. The Doctor took hold of her hands and tried to pull her away from the edge.

"Hold on, Jenny!" he shouted.

"I'm slipping!" Jenny squealed. "Don't let go!"

Instead, a greater force slammed into her, forcing her onto her belly and pulling her down the hole. The Doctor's hands slipped and Jenny fell through the hole, screaming. The hole slammed shut and the Doctor was the only one left. He stood up in disbelief that he let another one slip through his fingers. Just like Amy Pond, just like Rose Tyler, just like all the others. But this one was different, for this was his daughter. The last time he saw her, she died in his arms and thought she was gone forever. The rage boiled. He turned to the ceiling in anguish.

"At first I wanted to help you," the Doctor said in a low growl. "I wanted to see if there was still a way to find the right place for you to survive well without having anyone harmed in your wake. Now you've harmed someone precious to me and I have no other choice but to ask you to leave. Immediately."

"So you say," the voice said. "But I can rectify that very shortly."

At that very moment, the Doctor couldn't move his limbs. The feeling in his fingers and toes were still there, but he couldn't move them, not even to reach his sonic screwdriver. Another cloud descended before him. And out of the cloud came a dark skinned woman with blue and gray tinted dreadlocks and deep dark olive eyes. Her face had a couple of warts and her teeth were slightly broken and crooked as if they were painful. Her shredded gauzy gown flowed behind her as she sauntered to him, raising her hand and pointing a finger at the Doctor. As she drew closer and raised her hand higher, the Doctor rose higher and levitated above the ground.

"First, Time Lord," she spoke in her Caribbean accent. "The queen will rise. Then, the flood… and you will go down with it."

* * *

Though it was warm Louisiana weather still, the air was getting colder. A breeze fell through the swamp as the three of them shivered, squelching in their wet shoes. Claire looked down at her heels, wondering if the heel would eventually break off from the rest of the shoe on both feet. Even more so, her feet burned from walking so far in her heels, she fretted over getting a blister on each toe.

Louis kept his finger on the spit valve of his trumpet, thinking the horn still had filthy river water still stuck in there. He blew as much as he could out, but still thinking he needed to buy a brand new horn, which at any rate would be too difficult to come by since shiny new music instruments were hard to come by. Maybe a new cornet would be nice, he thought.

The old hermit who now called himself the Doctor just walked on, shivering as he went. Though the temperature outside wasn't that much colder, he could feel a bitter biting chill in the air. He didn't mind it. His only thoughts were of the phantoms that pulsed through the sky and instigated a huge disaster at the Lincoln Park gig, leading to their escape in a hot air balloon. The balloon was probably meant for somebody else, but he didn't care. All that mattered now was getting to someplace warm where they could hide and dry off, and maybe a place to defend themselves against these ghosts.

"Louis," the hermit said. "Where is the nearest trolley car from here?"

"No idea," Louis said.

"What about a boat?"

"Nope."

"Closest town?"

"We're in a huge swamp," said Claire, humphing and letting out a shiver. She kept her arms folded and rubbed her hands over them to fight off her cold body temperature from her wet hair and soaked flapper dress. "I think it's safe to say that we're lost. I hate being lost."

"Everyone needs to get themselves lost sometimes," said the old hermit. "You never know exactly what you might find when you're lost. And if you stay where you are, being lost, someone might be able to find you and take you somewhere where you won't be as lost anymore. Now shut up, I'm trying to think."

"I remember when I got lost when I was six years old," Claire said. "It was a Bank Holiday at the beach. I got so worried that I was getting lost and nobody would come looking for me. I was so scared I cried. But when I stayed put, my mum found me. Sometimes I wondered if my mum ever got lost when she found me there, but she did and I didn't know it. She tucked me up in bed and told me a story. At least that's what I remembered of it."

"You was lost at the beach?" Louis said. "That's what you was afraid of most? I didn't know that about you."

"Honestly, I didn't know that about myself," Claire said, placing a hand to the back of her head. "I don't exactly know where that memory came from. It just sort of popped up out of nowhere."

"You're remembering bits of your past, always a good sign," the hermit said.

Claire picked up her pace and approached his side. "A sign of what?"

"The toxin is wearing off. You're going back to normal. You're remembering things now."

"Toxin? What toxin?"

"The low clouds that begin to turn colors, like red and pink and gray, they all have a different level of toxins. Depending on the potency, the toxin released in those clouds has a low level telepathic field to affect both humans and Time Lords. To a human, it can render the victim unconscious and do a slight memory wipe job. For Time Lords and other two hearted races, it can be even more deadly. The yellow clouds are the ones to avoid the most, for those can cause death to two hearted races. The pink ones just render those with two hearts or a human one unconscious for a short period, enough to leave you helpless like chloroform. The red clouds do a big memory wipe job, usually, but the more you're exposed to the toxins, the deadlier the effects it can have on you unless you stay somewhere with clean air. That's why it was important for you not to leave your bed."

"So what do the gray ones do?" Claire asked.

"I think I've forgotten," said the old man. "I don't think they do anything, to tell you the truth."

"It don't matter what kind of cloud it is," said Louis. "Them things give me the heebie jeebies."

"You could do a whole song about that," the old hermit said. "No, really, you could."

"Stop giving him suggestions and focus on where we're going, John," said Claire.

He didn't pay any attention to what she said except for one thing. "The name is Doctor, for the last time."

"Doctor who?" she said.

"Enough of that, that question bores me after a while. Gives me a headache."

"Well the grumpiness makes sense but I still don't have a clue who you are."

They stopped when they reached a clearing in the swamp, all lit with lamps and candles. There was a small dock on the right hand side and at the dock was a tall white riverboat with a big red water wheel to steer the steamboat in the direction of the river. Claire breathed a heavy sigh. At long last, they were saved. They drew closer to it, picking up their paces into a faster sprint. Upon reaching their destination, the only difficulty they found was the sign by the entrance to the boat: All gamblers and fancy women must sign up with captain before boat leaves for New Orleans. No coloreds.

"Hmm, interesting," said the Doctor.

"What?" Claire said. "What's wrong?"

"Well, we could easily get in there, but Louis has to stay behind or we'll all be thrown overboard."

"I'll bet he will," Claire said, placing both hands on her hips. "There's no way I am letting my mister stay behind again. We'll find a way to sneak him inside."

"Sugar, you knows I can't go in there," Louis said. "What happens if I gets caught?"

"You won't," said Claire. "As much as I love you and as long as you're mine, it won't make the slightest bit of difference. As long as you keep out of sight of the other guests and the marshals, you'll be fine."

Just then, a familiar voice interrupted them. "Claire?"

She turned. Her old friend Marcie stood there at the entrance behind them in her flapper's finest, dressed head to toe in silver. "Oh my god, Marcie! You look lovely!"

"Claire, what a coincidence!" chirped Marcie as she gave her a hug. "How are ya, girl! Oh… how'd you get all wet?"

Claire sighed with a shy smile. "You'd never believe me."

"Well, you can't come on the riverboat looking like that," Marcie said, taking Claire by the arm. "There's a fancy party goin' on tonight, and I want you lookin' your best for the fellas here. There are so many handsome single men, you'll flip! Hurry up, girl, come on!"

With that, Marcie dragged her from her men and onto the boat. They passed many young people along the way, heading in different directions through the heavy foot traffic. When they made it to Marcie's personal room on the upper deck, she handed Claire a towel and began pulling dresses out of her wardrobe closet. Claire settled on a simple red silk dress with black fringe at the bottom and flowing chiffon cap sleeves. Because she didn't wear the same shoe size as her friend, Claire donned a pair of black flats she ordered from the downstairs shop, having them brought up by room service. She thought she'd only borrow them for the night anyway and later return them when she was finished. She needed a break from wearing heels that night.

As Marcie and Claire headed to the ballroom when Claire had changed and was all dried off, the boat was thriving with people. Young folks and some old ones moved their own way through the ship, smoking, drinking their alcohol-free punch and playing cards at the card tables. There seemed to be less chaos and more of a chill in the atmosphere, everyone talking calmly about their lives and the automobiles they bought, even how much money they made off the Stock Market in New York. Claire never bothered in buying stocks for she was a teacher. So she felt a little out of place since everyone on the boat was unbelievably wealthy.

The ballroom inside the main entrance was a palace hall. Jeweled chandeliers hung from the ceiling and glowed dimly with flame and candle wax. The halls were painted white with red stripes almost like a candy paradise, and the redwood floors gleamed enough for people to dance to the music by the Dixieland band sitting at the top of the stairs by the glass windows. Louis would have pointed out to her that every single one of those men in the band were white guys, and didn't know how to swing or play real blues music, like Buddy Bolden's tunes. She guessed they had never been exposed to the other side of New Orleans Dixieland that Louis was used to hearing.

Keeping her hand close, Marcie pulled Claire to the center of the dance floor where people crowded around the hall, clamoring about their business. Claire looked back to see if Louis or the old man made it through to the boat, but with her diminutive height, she could hardly see past the crowd of people closer to the door. The steam stack let out a triumphant whistle. The boat was moving away from the dock and someone shouted, "All aboard!" in the distance. It was too late to look back now. The men she traveled here with were no longer with her now. She had to find a way to them somehow.

Cymbals crashed near the end of the band's song and the emcee appeared at the top of the stairs. He stood in his tuxedo and turned to the audience below and said, "Welcome, ladies and gents to the Sarah Bell, a state-of-the-art one-of-a-kind steam riverboat powered by the steam and electrical generators of our main proprietor, Mr. R. F. Lakely. We want to thank everyone for being a good sport and contributing to this grand success and to our charity fund for orphaned children.

"We have half a million dollars to go to the best Texas Hold Em player on the boat, which means there will be seventeen broken hearts to the gamblers at the tables," he continued. "Anyone caught cheating, you know where you're goin', and let's just hope the alligators don't smile at you."

People laughed at this remark. Claire ignored it, for someone came to her side and offered her a drink. She looked over her shoulder to find him again, dressed in another tuxedo with a white tie and coat over his tall thin old frame. He raised his gray eyebrows and smirked at her. Then he winked and walked away, carrying his tray of drinks with him.

"Impossible," she said.

"What's that?" Marcie said, catching her remark.

"Nothing."

"Now the dance party will begin shortly," said the emcee. "So folks, take your partners, and gamblers take your tables outside to place your bets. Have a good time, everyone!"

Marcie walked over to a group of gentlemen in suits and found a dance partner easy. Claire on the other hand was not so interested in finding someone and more focused on where she could find her man. He's probably amongst the kitchen staff, she thought. She wandered about, meandering out of the ballroom and around the halls of the riverboat, and not caring if she got lost in the shuffle.

But as she made her way to the front deck of the boat to the gamblers' table, the sky was breaking up again. It turned an almost purplish pink against the already black sky over the horizon. This time, the boat was drawing closer to it, and the hole in the sky was now more apparent and deeper than anything Claire had ever seen before than all the nights she spent lying awake, nightmare after nightmare. Something else was coming.


	10. Night Nine: A Prison of Time Forever

Night Nine:

A Prison of Time… Forever

Louis was afraid to leave the closet of the kitchen where the Doctor hid him. He opened the door by a hair and peeked through to see all the men and women working the kitchen to get food served. Without a sound, he crept around the tables and ovens without anyone noticing him. Everyone paid attention to the flaming pans and platters of custard and filet mignon, making sure everything was in the right place. Approaching the dining hall, he stopped to look out the window for Claire. She didn't appear to be in there. Quietly, he went into the dining hall, picked up a menu and buried his face in it, making sure no one saw him. When he stepped outside to the starboard edge of the boat, he found himself alone by another stepwell. The waves crashed against the side of the boat and the rotating wheel.

Then suddenly, a point in the sky opened and a light shined on the stern side of the boat ahead of him. Someone screamed until the light went off, the sky slammed shut, and a woman let out a groan of a landing. Startled, Louis ran to her and picked her up until she was on her feet. She was a tiny little thing in a polka dot dress and periwinkle coat with the oddest things on her feet. Were they rubber shoes or were they cloth that matched her coat? Her red hair was coifed in a strange updo, but was only slightly messy from her fall.

She shook her head and shoulders with a sigh and said, "Wow! What a rush!"

"Who are you?" Louis said.

"Oh, I'm sorry, we haven't met yet," she said. "I'm… I had it only a second ago… I'm…"

"You lost?" said Louis at last.

"No, I think I know where I am," the young girl said. "Last time I checked, I was on my way back to Paris to surprise my companion Lenny O'Gavigan. He's Irish. Oh, and a boxer! Did I mention he was a champion middle weight back in Lancashire? So sorry, I'm rambling. What is this place?"

Louis looked at her, dumbfounded. "New Orleans," he answered flatly.

"New Orleans," she said, placing a finger to her lips. "I like the sound of that. What year is this, nineteen twenties? The Roaring Twenties? You're very dapper to be poking around here on a riverboat. So sorry again. Jenny! I'm Jenny! That's what I was about to say."

She held out her hand and shook his.

"Now, then, we've got to do something about the sky," Jenny said.

"The sky?" said Louis, following her up the stairs. "What needs to be done about the sky?"

"Classified, I'm afraid," she said, pulling out her pink pen from her blue handbag and pressing its button to make it whir and flash with a red light at the sky to scan it. She let go of the button and glanced at the readings. "This is also a gadget you don't need to know about."

"Now wait a minute, somethin's not right here," Louis said, following her to the gamblers' tables. "Everybody's been hiding things from me and I've had just about enough! First my gal is hiding that she's sick and she's been following around some old man, the next thing I know there are too many of them ghosts on the Bayou. And I'm not allowed to know any of this?"

"Well, I don't see you as incompetent," she added, putting her pen away back in her bag. "I just don't see if you'll be useful, Mr.…"

"Armstrong," he said. "Louis Armstrong."

Jenny stopped when she heard the name and looked up straight at him. Her face changed to pure excitement. "Louis Armstrong! Really! You don't say. I must say, I am a huge fan of yours. Tell me, do you by any chance play jazz trumpet?"

Thunder rolled and the sky above them changed. The clouds in the sky began to roll counterclockwise. As the boat came closer, the change in the weather became more apparent. And it was looming closer to where they stood.

"Should I be concerned for everyone else on this boat?" Jenny said. "Or is it just another thunder storm?"

"Everybody out!" a man shouted. Louis and Jenny turned. It was the old hermit again, telling people to leave. "No seriously, everyone needs to leave now. Head to the lifeboats, you can play cards later! Storm's coming! It's a very bad one!"

"Doc, what's the matter with you?" Louis said.

"Nothing, you shouldn't be here but you came with me anyway," the Doctor said. "Who's this cat you dragged in?"

"Excuse me, cat?" said Jenny. "I am not an animal, I'm a Time Lady!"

"Missy?" the Doctor said.

"No, Jenny!" she roared. "And who the hell might you be?"

"The Doctor. Now why don't you run along with all the other kiddies and…"

"I bet I will! I'm not a child! I'm the last of the Time Ladies."

"No, shut up, forget I said that!" He paused and did a double take. He lowered his voice. "Who did you say you were?"

"Jenny, the Stripe. The Doctor's Daughter."

"Jenny?" the Doctor whispered. "_My_ Jenny?"

Jenny scoffed. "I belong to nobody. Unless…"

It took her less than a minute to register, the longer she looked at the old man.

"Daddy?"

"Yes, it's me," the Doctor said.

"You got old!" Jenny squeaked. The Doctor shushed her as she lowered her voice. "How did you do that?"

He pointed at his face. "Twelfth regeneration. Two thousand years."

"You can't be serious," Jenny said, backing away.

"Fellas," Louis said, calling their attention. The Doctor and Jenny looked up to where Louis was pointing. Electricity crackled within the turning clouds. Lightning blinked through and lit up the atmosphere. Thunder rolled. The pink clouds jutted out and began to produce the same tiki-faced ghosts haunting the skies. They flowed freely, screeching as they hovered. They lowered their altitude, coming closer to the steam boat. Their screeches increased in volume. The din of them increased to one piercing cry as they all swarmed together.

"Ballroom, now," the Doctor said. As the ghosts came down, people fled this way and that, running for the life boats, even jumping overboard to get away. About fifteen ghosts hovered through the port and starboard bows, picking off people and turning them a pale albino white, killing them instantly. The Doctor dodged one as he slid through the ballroom doors. He held the door open for Louis and Jenny to run through. Upon slamming the door, one of the ghosts slid through the smaller opening of the door and fought to get inside. The Doctor strained his arms and back to push the door shut.

The ghost still got in.

The door eventually shut, the Doctor bolting it with his screwdriver. The ghost showed its teeth and howled. It reeled in closer as Jenny and Louis turned around and whimpered. It came up close to the Doctor's eyes. Without warning, the Doctor yanked out his sonic screwdriver, pointed it at the ghost and fired. The ghost screeched and the noise of the sonic tore through its torso and ripped it apart into millions of electrical ashes.

He tossed his sonic screwdriver in the air, caught it and kissed it before putting it away in his jacket. "Too easy," he said.

Claire and Marcie came out from hiding by the stairs. Louis ran to her and embraced her. "Baby! I'm so glad to sees you! You a'ight?"

Claire trembled in his arms but shook it off. "Peachy keen, sweetie, now you're here."

"How did that happen?" Marcie said. "What were those things?"

"Vitauri Phantoms from the Sacred Chasm of Bautelyne," the Doctor said. "The airborne hunters that track anything with energy, anything with a sentient consciousness, they're mind parasites from another dimension. When they get close enough to something with a conscience or something with a mind, Tardises, Time Lords, humans, even lizards, it takes memories of them and uses it as dinner. And when they leave something behind, they leave behind nightmares to turn your memories against you. If you've ever had that dream where you're falling down a deep hole that you can't get out of, it's scary, but you never know when you'll hit the bottom. It goes on and on until…"

"You die," Jenny said, finishing his sentence. "The reason why their bodies are left white and pallor is because they have no sense, no blood, no brain chemistry left in their bodies. Once they take your memories, they start taking everything else and pumping you with darkness."

"But not all nightmares end the same," Claire said. "When I have bad dreams, I wake up from them, usually in a sweat or something like I'm having some sort of fit. Then I calm myself down or Louis helps me to realize that it was just my imagination."

"That's why it's important to remember everything in your past, or don't remember anything at all," the Doctor concluded. "But that's not important right now. Right now, we need to find a place to hide safely from these things and figure out a way to stop these things from attacking the rest of the United States."

"I second that," said Jenny, raising her hand and coming closer to the group.

"Who is this?" Marcie said.

The Doctor sighed. "Everyone, this is Jenny, my daughter. Jenny, meet everyone else."

"Daughter?" Louis said.

"Did you hear what he said?" Jenny coughed in an impertinent manner.

Almost immediately, everyone was arguing. At many times, the Doctor tried to shut them all up by shouting higher than all of them, but it failed to work. He put a hand to his head as if a headache was growing, though Time Lords rarely got headaches. Either way, it was Claire who got their attention at that very moment.

"Just STOP!" Claire shouted. Everyone quieted down until she could hear a needle drop. "I have had just about enough of this! I'm not asking for any more of this hullaballoo or being able to dodge these phantom things in tin corsets for everyone. But everyone has to calm down now!"

She panted as if she could never breathe again. She felt a slight weakened feeling in her legs from all that dancing and all that running, but she forced herself straight up to stay awake, shifting her weight on each foot to keep the blood flowing to her toes.

After a long moment passed, Claire lowered her voice and said, "Now, can somebody please explain to me what in hell's name is happening and what these two idiots are doing here?"

For a moment, no one said a word. Finally, the Doctor spoke up. "Something led me here to investigate, or at least the Tardis did."

"I crash landed in a great white time bubble before landing here," said Jenny.

"Time bubble?" Claire said. "What's a time bubble?"

"I didn't understand it myself until a strange man in a bow tie told me," Jenny replied.

"Bow tie?" said the Doctor. "Young with floppy hair?"

"That's the chap," said Jenny. "The young bloke in the purple suit and a big chin."

"Oh thanks," the Doctor said in a condescending sardonic tone. "You do know he's the same man, don't you?"

"You're impossible, you know that?" Jenny remarked.

"Please, enough!" said Claire, barking at both of them. "I just want to know what is happening out there."

The Doctor sighed. "I think I have an idea about all this," he said. "The time bubble is a fixed hole in time and space, room enough for a pocket universe. The problem is, it's expanding too fast that it's swallowing our universe. In that regard, it's pulling everything up from this planet, causing a huge tropical storm in its path. Considering it probably generated within the Bermuda Triangle and crossed the Gulf Ocean waters, it's becoming less of a tornado and more like a hurricane. The more speed it gains with any luck, it'll hit New Orleans and the rest of America, swallowing the whole country whole, before the end of all humanity when it swallows all of mankind."

"That's unbelievable," Claire said. "Worse than Hurricane Katrina."

"What did you say?" said Louis.

"Nothing," Claire replied. "Don't know where that came from."

"That's where bow tie and I have been stuck in for quite some time," Jenny said.

"You mean the Eleventh Doctor," the Doctor said. "Your dad."

"Not helping," said Jenny. "The thing is it seems to go on and on forever. How could it be making a hurricane when it's growing that big?"

"Bigger on the inside. The time bubble, the prison of time that you and the Doctor were trapped in, is in the eye of the storm, the most peaceful part of the hurricane itself. It's opened a wormhole through the fabric of time and space and caught the both of you inside of it."

"So how do we get chinny dad out of there?"

"I don't know. We'd have to find his Tardis first before we can get a rescue plan going." He ran to the window to find the ghosts all rejoining and heading back towards the heavens. "Should be safe now," he said before returning to the group. He opened one of the doors. "I'll be back once I find the Tardis."

"What about them ghost things?" said Marcie.

"They won't be back until the storm is closer," the Doctor said. "Just stay here and look out for yourselves."

"What about me?" Claire said. "Are you just going to forget us, just like that?"

The Doctor approached Claire and cupped his hands on her face. "I never forget a face," he said. "I just can't believe that you would forget mine."

Claire paused. "Then how did I forget? If I knew you, I would have remembered you, but I don't. You're just John Smith the grumpy old hermit to me."

"You still have that English accent, though. So you remember you were born in England."

"That's true, but how do you know that?"

"That…" he paused. "Is a mystery worth solving yourself."

He left the ballroom without another word, closing the doors as he went and locking the door with his screwdriver.

Claire looked back at the door that shut itself. She ran to it and rattled the doors. It was no use; they were trapped there. She banged her fist on the wood and started sobbing.

Marcie drew closer to her friend, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Claire, come away from the door," she said. "It's all right, baby. He said he'll be back."

Claire turned around and said, "But I don't know who I am anymore."


	11. Night Ten: Impossible, Yet Possible

Night Ten:

Impossible, Yet Possible

The sounds of Claire's sobs echoed through the empty dance hall. From the way Louis looked at her, he couldn't take seeing his girlfriend in pain and crying.

"But babe, you know who you are," said Louis, taking her hand when she came back to him. "You're my gal."

"Cancer," Claire said, ignoring him.

"What?" Louis said.

"My mum died of cancer," Claire said, finding her voice. "She didn't have tuberculosis like I said she did before. I watched her in a hospital bed, her hair falling out and everything, until she was gone. And we were going to travel together. How could I ever forget a thing like that?"

She trembled. Her eyes stung with tears. The three of them all stared at her, expressions vacant.

"I'm remembering bits and pieces of my past that I thought I'd never see again," she continued. "Why is this happening to me now?"

Jenny approached Claire and put her hands up to her head. "Can I have a look?"

"Why?" Claire said, wiping away tears. "What are you going to do?"

"I need to look inside your mind," Jenny said. "It won't hurt a bit. Just hold still."

Jenny closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to Claire's head. Claire shut her eyes and felt Jenny walking along the hallways of her brains and memories, watching everything around her. The sounds of Jenny's heels clacked and echoed through the halls. She could hear Jenny's voice echoing through her mind. "If there's something you don't want me to see, just picture a door and close it. I won't look."

Jenny stopped walking when she approached a dead end. There at the end of the hall was the same computer lock screen that said: Password?

"Hmm," Jenny said aloud. "There's something locked up tight, but it won't let me in."

"What is it?" Claire said.

"Random access to your memories," said Jenny. "It's as if your long term memories from the past twenty-six or twenty-seven years are under quarantine. I can't get in there. It keeps asking for a password."

A translucent keyboard appeared before her and Jenny began to type in a few characters: 23111963. The screen blared: Access Denied. One attempt remaining.

"I can't even hack it," Jenny said.

More words came up on screen: Under my protection. –The Doctor

"Impossible," said Jenny. "The man's impossible."

Jenny let go of Claire's thoughts and removed her hands from her. Claire opened her eyes to the ballroom again, still dizzy from the after effects of the mind-meld.

"I'm very sorry, dear, but there's no use of me hacking into that memory vault without the right passcode and I don't know it," Jenny said.

Claire looked up at Jenny, finding her feet again. "Then how do I get in there?"

"I don't know what else to tell you," Jenny said. "But you'd have to go with my dad on this one, you've got to remember your password. Do you have it written down somewhere?"

"No!" said Claire. "If I knew my password, I'd have written it on my hand! And look!" She raised her hand to show her. "Completely clean!"

"Do you have a password reminder somewhere?" Jenny said calmly.

Claire still remained to be in a panic. Her heart quivered in her chest. "Why would I have a bloody password reminder if I didn't have the password written down?!"

"Baby, calm down," Louis said, folding his hands on her arms. He looked her in the eyes. "Breathe, honey, breathe with me."

Claire took two long deep breaths with Louis before speaking. "Everyone keeps telling me to remember when I just want to forget! I'm having nightmares the more I think about them all."

"What kind of nightmares?" Jenny asked.

"The kind where you think it's real the more you see it, until you wake up and force yourself to think it was fake," Claire said, pushing Louis's arms out of the way. She brushed away more tears. "I've had that same dream for a whole two weeks now. The same one, over and over again."

"What did the dream look like?"

Claire took a breath and swallowed back more tears. "I'm running with a strange man next to me. I'm gasping, and he keeps dragging me. Then I fall, and I'm crawling to a tiny blue shed, or it looks like a shed. The next thing I know, there's a blinding light and the man disappears, and then a scary looking creature swallows me whole. As soon as I see a scary old woman who looks and talks like she's going to kill me, I wake up… Wait a mo, the creature that swallowed me in the dream looked an awful lot like the ghosts out there."

"You saw the Vitauri Phantoms and an old lady in the dream?" Jenny said. "Is there a chance that you could be recalling a memory in your sleep?"

"I have no idea," Claire said, the tears flowing more frequent.

Marcie put an arm around her and said to Jenny, "Hey now, can't you see she's in pain?" She turned back to her friend and said, "It's all right, honey, don't cry."

"I didn't mean to hurt her or make things worse," said Jenny. "I'm so sorry."

Claire continued to weep. Louis then pulled her aside and said to the ladies, "I got this. I'll take care of this." He led her to the side of the stairs to the little balcony by the windows and held her. Sobbing into his shirt, Claire held Louis for a few moments and let her emotions take her.

Claire lifted her head to him and said, "We're all going to die, aren't we?"

"Naw, babes," Louis said. "Forget all that stuff. You see an awful lot of good more than I ever could. Don't look at them and see nothin' but the bad. One day, we won't be here no more. And things will be there for us, better things on the other side. Come on, you knows I hate to see a woman cry, so dry them tears."

"How do you know that's going to happen?" Claire said, her hands resting on his arms.

"Because I don't," Louis said. "But I know one thing's for sure, that I'd make you the happiest woman alive."

He then got down on his knees and pulled out a diamond ring from his jacket pocket. Claire stood back and gasped with her hand flying to her mouth.

He then looked up at her and said, "I loves you, Claire Melissa Oscar. Will you marry me?"

Claire put her hands down and smiled. "Yes."

She sniffed and put her left hand out for him to place the ring on her finger. It was a simple gold diamond ring that probably didn't cost much, for Louis still had very little money, but Claire knew everything would turn out fine. Louis stood up and kissed her passionately, his arms folding around her.

As he pulled away, he said, "There ain't nothing you need to remember, except you got me."

"Me, you, the world, and jazz," Claire said at last.

But just as Louis was about to kiss her again, Claire heard a ringing noise and felt something vibrate at her hip. Backing away, she noticed the buzzing was coming from her beaded handbag.

"It's really not supposed to do that," she said.

Then looking inside her red beaded handbag, the handbag she entrusted Marcie to guard with her life before, she pulled out the little white box that was vibrating and ringing. It was new and strange like she had never seen it before, but it also felt familiar in her hands like she had used one before. It was a compact telephone. On its black screen was a picture of the world, the clock set to the time in London, England, and a tiny message.

Hello, Clara Oswald! You have 1 new message. Slide to unlock

She was instantly confused by the little box's magical message blinking at her, but curiosity recaptured and ensnared her mind, so she slid her thumb across the screen and unlocked the cell phone lock screen.

A white screen appeared before her, which opened the electronic envelope to view the hidden message.

To Oswin From The Doctor: New message

Run you clever girl. Do you remember now?

The message made no sense, like a riddle in the dark. Run you clever girl? Who was she, some idiot? Nutters say run you clever girl, because the clever don't run; the fit ones do. Claire never ran track or did anything for sport, so why was the message telling her to run? Unless the message was never for her, maybe it was a code or a clue. Or a sign. The hermit did tell her to look for a sign from him to make sure the coast was clear. Perhaps he meant that literally, the coast was in fact clear, as in the Gulf Coast or along the Mississippi River. Either way, she didn't have enough time.

Run you clever girl. That had to mean something. Girls never run for they often wore high heels. If they ran, they'd skin and bruise their knees easily. Men could run faster and fight harder. Men had more muscle whereas women's bodies were made mostly of fat and water. Clever boys could run. As for the question of 'Do you remember'… Run you clever boy… and remember…

In the box labeled 'Reply', Claire typed: RYCBAR, run you clever boy and remember…

One by one, roaring beyond the rate of blinking, the memories flooded Claire's mind, lighting up every corner as if someone flipped a short circuited switch. She felt Louis grab her before she hit the floor in a shout of panic. She was too far gone into the black screen that flooded her mind, for all she could see was the first memory, a man walking down the street on a windy autumn day.

Her mother told her that story of when she was born, floating into the world on a leaf…

"Oh my stars! Are you all right?"

A plucky brunette had saved a man from a car accident, the leaf flying into his face from a gust of wind. If it wasn't for her, that oncoming car would have smashed him into the asphalt. It was not the 1890s, the year was 1986 to be exact.

The two of them married, their daughter was born…

Her mother gave her the best gift of all, 101 Places to See. She kept the book, documenting each year she had it and marking pages of where she wished to travel. The same leaf that brought her to the world was Page One.

Then that one Bank Holiday, when she was lost on Blackpool Beach until her mum found her…

"It doesn't matter where you are, in the jungle or the desert or on the moon," her mother said, sitting on her bed that night. Little Clara clung to the book 101 Places to See in bed next to her. "However lost you might feel, you'll never really be lost, not really. Because I will always be here and I will always come and find you."

She put a hand to Clara's forehead and brushed her brown hair back with her fingers. "Every single time."

School, university, and learning to become an English teacher… She had only one pin-up poster in her bedroom since her teenage years that she kept, a Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius…

Her first day of teaching school, mayhem in the classroom, children throwing paper airplanes, pencils, candy wrappers, shouting and screaming as if it was still recess…

"Stop it! Stop it, all of you, now!" she shouted to take control of the classroom. "If you don't stop it, I'm going to have each and every single one of you kicked out of this school!"

The classroom quieted down. Courtney, one of the students stared up at her in disgust, testing her.

"Go on, then. Do it. I dare you."

And later still, the worst news of her life…

The tombstone read: In Loving Memory of Ellie Marie Oswald, Loving Wife and Mother

She held the book of 101 Places to See in her hands, opened to Page One, next to the documentations of her age for each year she kept it. Staring down at the page, she flipped it over. "Property of Ellie." The sting stabbed her eyes, she let a tear fall onto the page and closed the book. Cradling the book in her arms, her father stood beside her and touched her shoulder.

"I miss her too, dear," her dad said softly. The sting still remained in her heart.

A long awaited holiday came, a friend of her father's asked her to watch after his children, since their mother also passed away nearly a year ago. And she bought her first computer to do some travel window shopping…

She couldn't find the Internet.

She went back to the store and asked a woman at a tech service desk about the solution to her problem. She could never see who she was and never asked her name, she referred to her as "the woman in the shop", though she did seem to be either out of another time or Mary Poppins. The strange lady in the plum coat gave her the phone number to call for tech service, taking almost a thousand years for someone to answer.

Little did she know, she was calling someone at least eight hundred years in the past, and in just a matter of seconds after a short conversation with the man on the other end, he was on her doorstep… in the strangest robe, exactly like a monk's…

"Clara?" he asked, towering above her with the giddiest smile.

"Yes?"

"Clara Oswald?" he began again.

"Hello…" she answered.

"Clara Oswin Oswald?!" he beckoned eagerly.

She gave him the most puzzled look as if she never heard that name before. She knew he needed to tone his excitement and lock it down so she could understand him. He was so, very odd.

"Just Clara Oswald," she said. "What was that middle one?"

"Do you remember ME?!"

He gasped, breathing heavily as if he just met her already. No, impossible, she had never seen him before in her life, and now he came off as a creep.

"Umm… No, should I? Who are you?"

"The Doctor!" he cried. He searched her face, stepping into the doorway but finding her to be unrelenting. "No? The Doctor?" He turned to the mirror next to him to see himself.

From the distance between herself and the mental screen, Claire saw her reflection in that mirror, a complete replica of herself in 21st century Lancashire. And next to this memory shadow called Clara was the strange man, the man from the running dreams.

And she saw the Clara image in the mirror turn and speak to the man. "Doctor who?"

"No, just The Doctor!" he exclaimed back. He turned to face the mirror again and gave himself a winsome crisp smile.

She slammed the door in his face, he pounded on the door to let him back in, crying that he needed to talk to her… then came the little girl she thought was one of the children she looked after, before the girl reared her head and the shadow of Clara fainted in blinding light…

She awoke in her bed hours later as if from a long nightmare of her trapped somewhere cold with no doors or corridors…

I don't know where I am… where am I? Where am I? Someone help me… I don't know where I am…

Now there were Jammie Dodger biscuits and a glass of water on the table next to her, and the same man was sitting outside her house next to a larger than life blue box…

The royal blue painted wood from the dream… Police Public Call Box… That sounded familiar… Was any of this real?

He saved her life that day, saved the world for that matter, the next week he came back but looked like he hadn't aged a day… same purple suit and jacket vest, gold watch chain, a neat dark colored bow tie… The many worlds and places in history and outer space flickered in front of her faster than the nickelodeon pictures… a tiny little girl in a red cape named Merry Galehl the Queen of Years… a thawing alien on a communist Russian submarine… a ghost haunting a mansion on the moors… running through a spaceship with salvage men, one of them a robot, or not… a green lizard woman in Victorian Yorkshire accompanied by another lady with a cockney accent and a squat man in a space suit, though he looked like some funny potato… an entire planet amusement park where she and the children from home accompanied them for a holiday… before the scary men in silver kidnapped the kids and attacked everyone else…

And even faster still, the scariest moments…

Plaster white men in top hats with no eyes, no noses, just mouths and fangs… a sinister old Victorian gentleman jumping into a time stream… and The Doctor screaming and crying for help…

"My world is burning," he wept. "Please… stop… my life…"

The shadow of Clara stood above him and made her way to the time stream…

"Run. Run you clever boy… and remember me…"

She dived headfirst into the shining vortex…

The fragments of the multiple shadows expanded the mental view screen to surround her. She saw each fragmentation stretched over the course of time and space, a man with a multi faceted scarf… a man hanging off a cliff by his umbrella… a young blond in a white suit with a sprig of celery on his lapel trapped and unconscious… someone in a black leather jacket… someone driving an antique yellow car… someone with the loudest looking coat she had ever seen… an old man with a hobo looking suit and a Beatles haircut… a man with a dark blue suit handcuffed in a library watching a woman in a space suit electrocute herself to save his life… a man in green velvet racing through New York City with a female American doctor… and the two instances where she found the same man from her dreams in different zones, with a red-haired Scottish woman and her husband surrounded by Daleks… and the other in Victorian London, herself as a bar maid and a governess…

Even in the beginning of his time stream… the very old man in a black suit and carrying a cane heading to an escape spaceship for his getaway… but nearly choosing the wrong one…

"Don't steal that one, steal this one," the fragment said, standing next to a Type 40 Tardis. "The navigation's much more knackered, but you'll have loads more fun!"

Though she could not believe any of these instances, all of those men were exactly the same person…

And every time the fragmented versions of herself died, their final dying words were the same… Run you clever boy and remember…

It finally stopped on one moment on a rocky terrain she could never recognize, where the shadow called Clara hit the bottom, sobbing and terrified from getting lost and possible certain death…

Then a voice… "Clara! Clara…"

Where…

"Just this once, Clara, let me save you… You're my Impossible Girl… One more step…"

Clara clutched herself, resting in The Doctor's arms…

And then the art museum in Trafalgar Square… strange red rubbery aliens… the same young man in the handcuffs now in a brown pinstripe suit… a much more elderly man dressed as the renegade soldier type… a woman claiming to be Queen Elizabeth the First, two of them, nearly identical twins…

At long last, the dream, in exact detail…

There was a parade down Canal Street. She couldn't remember what it was for. People crowded the entire stretch of land as the floats went by. Men carried lighted lamps with candles and danced their way down the street, lighting the street as people cheered and danced to the music. A huge float carried a Dixieland band that played their music loud. Confetti and beads were tossed everywhere and the Doctor and Clara stood in the middle of it all.

"So what do you think of this?" the Doctor shouted over the conundrum. "New Orleans, 1920, perfect place for a party!"

"Sounds like it," shouted Clara. "Why would we be at a party again?"

"I've been craving a good party after running down corridors after the Zygons!" the Doctor chirped back. "What do you think, Clara? We should probably have a celebration after all that chasing!"

"Well, let's just hope you know how to dance!" Clara said. She did a simple twirl and started dancing as if she was at a night club.

The Doctor smiled and raised his arms, shaking himself around like an inappropriate giraffe. He had no clue how to dance.

Clara turned and caught the Doctor's dance moves. "Oh my god! Is that how you really dance? That is horrible!"

"Well, no one really showed me how to dance," the Doctor said. "I thought it best to just keep it loose."

He raised his arms again and shook. Clara laughed. "That is embarrassing!"

They finally took each other in their arms and slow danced. "This is getting a little weird, is it?" the Doctor said in her ear.

"Not yet, but probably," said Clara in his.

Suddenly, the music stopped and the party was rudely interrupted by a screech. Thunder cackled and lightning flashed through the clouds breaking in the sky. The tiki-faced Vitauri Phantoms flew in all directions before flying in formation down towards the crowd down Canal Street. They howled. They screamed. The Doctor raised his sonic screwdriver and scanned the atmosphere above them for answers.

When he looked at his screwdriver, he said, "How did they find me here?"

People screamed. Running for their lives, they all started running from the formation of ghosts chasing them. The ghosts picked off people one by one, turning them into pale white corpses as they went. The Doctor and Clara ran for it, running down narrow alleys and passageways, making their way down the outskirts of town toward the blue box.

Lower clouds rolled in, all frothy light pink in hue towards the heroes. The smoke gently touched the hem of Clara's crimson flapper dress. The Doctor took her hand.

"Hurry, Clara!" he shouted. "They're gaining on us!"

"What are they?" Clara said.

"No idea, but I have to find out," he said. "We've got to get back to the Tardis!"

They kept running. One of the ghosts followed them down the alley towards the Tardis. It flew up and over the buildings ahead. Clara tripped and fell to her knees. She gasped and moaned in pain. She ran too fast for too long. Claire thought she would break.

The Doctor pulled on Clara's arm. "Come on! We can still make it!" he shouted.

The blue shed was just feet away. It looked less like a shed and more like a booth, a little blue box to call for help. "Police Public Call Box" it read. The Doctor looked like he could just about reach it. Clara couldn't get up, for the pink fog had settled in that crevice.

"Clara?" the Doctor said.

"I can't," she said, gasping. "I can't reach it. I'm so tired."

"No, Clara, don't do this to me!"

He knelt to her level and put his hands to her head. "The potency is too strong," he said. "Clara, you need to ignore it and fight. The ghosts are feeding on your memories. You've got to stop thinking about them."

Clara heaved. "I can't," she said. "I'm so sleepy."

"Stay awake," the Doctor said. He looked over his shoulder to the Tardis. There wasn't enough time to get there and carry her in. He had to leave her behind. "I'm sorry, Clara. I'm so, so sorry. But you can't come with me."

"What?" she said.

"You have to stay here," he repeated. "I'm going to have to wipe your memories clean so the ghosts don't kill you too. But not to worry, I'll keep them safe, and you won't remember how much you've lost."

"How?" she said, lifting her head up with great effort. She blinked back the tiredness in her eyes. "Am I not going to remember you?"

"No, you won't remember anything about your past," he said. "All you'll remember is being here in New Orleans at this fixed point in time. Just a made up story."

"You can't do this to me!" Clara cried. "You can't!"

"There's no time," the Doctor replied. "Just hold still."

"No," she sighed. "No! Doctor!"

He kissed the top of her head and placed his hands there. "I'm sorry, Clara. One day you'll know why…"

He closed his eyes and wiped her memories clean. Clara panted, jerking her head this way and that.

It couldn't be real. It was a nightmare. Was it a nightmare?

As the Doctor was finished, a bright white light flooded the alleyway. There was the old lady in her shredded dress and her blue, gray and dark hair. She threw up her hand and long white wires fell around the Doctor's body. He still had his hands on Clara when he whispered in her ear. "Run. Run, Impossible Girl… It's up to you now…"

The wires curled around his arms and neck as he floated up above where the lady stood. But then something whirred behind the Doctor's back, his sonic screwdriver, and the Tardis doors shut. Then as the whooshing sound returned, the blue box vanished as if there was nothing behind him.

The Doctor turned and shouted, "Save me! Rescue me Clara! Don't be afraid!"

"She is dead now," the woman said. "Be gracious, you've lost her forever."

"We'll see about that," he said. "Geronimo."

And there, they vanished. It was real. It happened. She was Claire no longer.

Clara… I'm Clara! I know who I am…

…and the Doctor is in mortal danger.

The words he whispered in her ear rang true as the shadow blacked out. "Run. Run, Impossible Girl… It's up to you now… When you wake, find me… Remember, Clara… Remember and rescue me…"

RYCBAR123 

ACCESS GRANTED

The memory faded, the screen dissolved, and Clara fell to the floor with a yelp, gaining her sight of reality again.

Louis reached over and took her by the shoulder. "Baby, you a'ight?"

She glanced up and around at the ballroom of the riverboat as she huddled in the corner. Still the Twenties in New Orleans, and still locked in the ballroom, abandoned by the old hermit John Smith. Something stabbed her again, right by her abdomen. The detox of gasses was complete. She ran to an empty barrel and retched inside.

Her man rushed back to her side in a panic. The others followed but kept their distance. "Baby?"

Clara glanced up after coughing and catching her breath. "I'm all right," she breathed. She said it again, but couldn't believe a word. But she knew. It tasted right as she formed the words.

"I'm free…"

She smiled, stood upright, and turned to everyone. Now this was embarrassing. "Hello, sorry you had to see that."

"Claire?" Marcie said. "Dahlin', what happened to you?"

"Nothing, I just remembered who I was."

They all stood puzzled, until she made sure what the old hermit told them was a confirmed truth.

"And my name is not Claire anymore. My name's Clara, Clara Oswald. I'm from nearly ninety-five years into the future, and I'm a traveler. Now, I hope someone could solve just one last mystery for me… Where's the Doctor?"

John Smith the hermit burst through the ballroom doors, but no longer in a hermit's disguise. He was now much more cleaned up in a navy blue suit and buttoned white shirt. Placing one hand on his belt revealing a touch of his coat's red lining and crossing his ankles as he rested on the door frame, he spoke in his Scottish drawl.

"Perhaps he's been under your nose the entire time, Clara."


	12. Night Eleven: Melt the Witch Queen pt 1

Night Eleven:

Melt the Witch Queen

"What's that, then?" said Clara.

John Smith advanced to her and said, "Oh, what am I thinking, you still don't remember me, do you? You came here with me…"

"I came with the Doctor, that's what I remember," Clara said. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

He stopped in surprise. "Oh, so you haven't really met me yet! You're from before I changed into this, this is wonderful! Come on, Clara, come on!"

He seized her wrist and pulled her out of the ballroom towards the Tardis, which stood right beside the double doors of the hall. Marcie, Louis, and Jenny followed them outside as John Smith pushed the Tardis doors open. Out along the horizon, the cloud cover moved in a circular motion, drawing closer and creating high winds whipping toward the riverboat. But no matter how long they were out there, the phantoms were nowhere in sight. John glanced back from the Tardis and stared up at the sky.

"It's a trick," he said. "They're trapping us for something bigger coming this way. We have to act quickly."

He pulled Clara inside and slammed the doors. Clara instantly remembered how the interior of the Tardis looked: circle things on the walls, the silver console in the middle only the time rotors in the center glowed orange instead of blue, the bookshelves along the walls were new, but the main part of the Doctor's spaceship was bigger on the inside, just as she left it all that time ago. She still had questions.

"How did you bring the Tardis here?" Clara said as John Smith worked the controls.

"I'm a fast swimmer," John said. "Oh, you mean the Tardis. I used the sonic to make it relocate to our location. Only took a matter of seconds, though short hops are pretty difficult in normal circumstances. I had to use your boyfriend's tie and some kitchen tools to get the signal working."

"Louis wasn't wearing a tie," Clara said.

John pressed a few buttons before pausing. After looking up at the screen, he went, "Uh-huh. I might have used mine."

"I still don't understand why you're driving the Tardis. The Doctor…"

John Smith flew to Clara and crouched to her eye level. "I _am_ the Doctor. You just don't know it yet!"

"If you're really the Doctor, how come I haven't seen your face?"

"You have a problem with my face?"

"Well, I'd fret if my face had all those wrinkles on it and my hair was gray for a start."

The cloister bells rang and something shook the console. "What was that?" Clara asked.

John flew back to the console in a panic and pulled on a few levers. He glanced back at the screen. "No. Not good."

The ground rumbled. Thunder rolled in the clouds. He ran to the double doors and looked outside. The other three people before him stood back. Out from the storm coming through, a light shone in the distance. Winds whipped about, thrashing the waves and making the boat ride unsteady. Out from the clouds and wind came the same Caribbean woman with blue and dark brown hair and a shredded gauzy nightgown. As she made her way across to the boat, the winds died down around her, as if the weather around her remained calm in the river of chaos.

He looked back at the Tardis and said, "Clara, stay here." He turned to Jenny. "You, in."

"But dad, what about-" Jenny started but trailed off.

"Stay in there until I say so!" John Smith barked. She went inside and closed the doors. He stood at the front of the deck and addressed the ghost woman while Marcie and Louis stayed well behind. "This is no pleasant night to be causing a storm here."

"You have not told me your wish yet," said the voodoo queen.

"Because I don't have to wish for anything," he said. "All I have to do is put on my magic shades…"

He donned his sonic sunglasses.

"And anything is possible."

"And how do you propose that will get you anything you want?" the ghost lady said.

John placed his hands behind his back and paced. "You see, it's not really about what I want; it's about what this planet wants. And I say this planet needs to be protected and it wants to be left alone. The Shadow Proclamation would have a field day if they knew what you were doing here."

He stopped in his tracks and turned to the voodoo queen, bowing his head and looking up at her from his sunglasses. He tipped them lower. "And with that in mind, there is no way you're going to consume this planet and make it out of this solar system alive."

"I fear that you're wrong, Time Lord," said the voodoo queen. "There is only one of you where I can summon the entire armada of my phantoms after the rest of this world and have enough power in the entire galaxy. We are so very hungry and your planet is a feast of nightmares."

"And that is all your fault because what happens when you have a Time Lord stuck in a vortex and another Time Lord on the other side, calling to the other one?"

The voodoo queen tilted her head like a bird and batted her opaque black eyes at him.

"Give up? Here's your answer…"

He gave his sonic sunglasses a shake. Jenny, who had peeked through the Tardis doors, fell back as the doors slammed shut once again. The time rotors whirred and heaved. The Cloister bells rang and a shimmering light from the top of the blue box shot through the sky and into the vortex. The Tardis screeched as a man fell through the beam, screaming as he went, and fell to the floor. Another shake of the glasses and the light switched off, the Tardis returning to its natural state.

The Doctor stood where he fell, whirling around and pointing his sonic screwdriver at John. After a beat, he said, "You really shouldn't have done that, whoever you are. The Tardis is not used to that sort of energy! You could have ripped her apart!"

John took off his sunglasses and said, "Well that's your problem, little boy, not mine."

"Little? Am I little? Do I look little to you?"

They looked at each other, face to face, eye to eye. They moved in a circle around each other as they stared. It suddenly dawned on both of them.

"Hello, Eleven o'clock," John said. "I'm Midnight."

The Doctor dropped his sonic screwdriver to his side. He whined. "Oh, blast, I got old! I knew I'd get old, but not that old! Anything but old!"

"Oh, just stop crying and get used to it!"

"And since when did I become Scottish?" said the Doctor. "Is this some sort of curse that I once travel with a ginger Scottish girl and be transformed into a Scotty myself?"

"Oh, just shutitty up!" John shouted. "You haven't even regenerated yet and you're giving me a migraine!"

The Doctor crossed his arms. "Well, you're certainly grumpy for a Doctor."

"Enough!" shouted the voodoo queen.

They both turned around, the Doctor firing his sonic screwdriver and John throwing up his sunglasses.

"You think those toys could help you now?" her voice echoed. "What if you were… under pressure?"

She threw up her hands as the wind knocked them both over onto the deck. Clara, who had just emerged from the Tardis, reached out for John's hand but was suddenly forced forward and fell overboard. Instantly, both John and the Doctor had lost all consciousness.


	13. Night Eleven: Melt the Witch Queen pt 2

John Smith opened his eyes when the atmosphere changed about him. The air cleared and the winds whipped across the river. He noticed his hands were bound behind his back against the pole at the front of the riverboat. He looked down and pulled at his right arm. Something clear and sticky clung to his wrist and retracted his arm in an instant.

He sighed. "Oh that's just great," he muttered to himself. "This was my best suit. Ruined. That's great."

Someone behind him moaned.

"Clara! It's a good thing you're here," he exclaimed. "You've got the sonic, don't you?"

The figure behind him didn't answer, but pulled his arm out only to let the same adhesive retract it again, giving way to sharp pain and vibration on both ends of the pole.

"Ow!"

"Clara, is that you?" the hermit said again, turning around to catch a glimpse of the person behind him.

The figure behind him answered in a British accent, but it wasn't Clara's. "Oi, you might want to keep your voice down, Scotty! There are Vitauri Phantoms everywhere and they could attack at any moment."

The figure turned around to his left to face John Smith. Dark hair, young, purple suit, bow tie, and a noticeable chin. He knew who he was instantly.

"No… Doctor?" he said.

The Eleventh Doctor eyed him up and down before he spoke. "Well, all you need is a bow tie, which is missing from your already ruined suit."

"Thanks for insulting me, little boy," the hermit said.

"Anytime, grandpa," said the Eleventh. "I take it, I'm already in my Twelfth regeneration?"

"Yes, but you make it sound like I'm so old."

"And I've gone gray, don't forget that bit. And Scottish!"

The boat vibrated beneath their feet. In the grand ballroom, the clock chimed. The two of them snapped back against the pole. Out from the clouded sky, the swirling clouds parted to reveal a ray of light coming from the eye of the storm - the hole to the pocket universe. It was growing exponentially, tearing up all the trees and shrubbery surrounding the river. The riverboat continued at an abrupt speed, the winds picking up and the water thrashing against the deck. The spray hit both of them in the face. Then John realized the impossibility staring him in the face as another phantom zoomed across the hull of the boat and melted away by the spray of the water. Then it hit the both of them.

"Doctor," said the Doctor. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"You are so brilliant," said John.

"I know, it's the bow tie," the Doctor added.

"Oh, do grow up," said John.

"Never gonna happen," said the Doctor.

* * *

Clara kept her eyes closed tight, knowing she didn't want to look down. She held tightly to the edge of the deck above her head as the spray of the river water caressed her feet. The riverboat whistled, howling over the smokestacks. The boat appeared to pick up speed as the water thrashed and the wind thrust against her face. Clara kept her eyes closed. She turned her head in the opposite direction and peered out to the distance. Something bright shone from the hole in the sky. Down from the hole came a beam of light crashing into the ground with a grinding sound. Water, ground, dirt, and plant life soon tore from the Earth and was sucked up into the hole. Then it pounded against the Earth again. More ground was sucked up into the hole. Above, the hole was growing exponentially. She still refused to look down.

Then someone held out a hand. "Grab it!" she yelled.

Clara looked up. Jenny stood at the deck above her, holding out her hand. Clara grabbed hold and pulled herself up, Jenny pulling her towards safety.

When she was safely on board, Jenny said, "How did you get to be down there?"

"Dunno," Clara said. "I was trying to grab hold of John or the Doctor, but I fell out of the Tardis. What are you doing out here?"

"Looking for you, of course. We can't stay out here too long because of the gas the phantoms are leaking."

"What?" Clara said, puzzled.

Jenny rolled her eyes, figuring she had to explain everything to a low-level human. "The Vitauri Phantoms are like wake angels. They tend to leave a little bit of excrement in their wake. They're not used to Earth's atmosphere, not used to breathing nitrogen, so they're leaving a trail of noxious gas behind. To them, it's nothing, but to humanoids and two hearted creatures like you and me, it's highly toxic. It's only a matter of time and how much exposure to the gas that it could be deadly. And we don't have much of that time before the rest of the planet is engulfed in it. Come on!"

She seized her wrist and dragged Clara away from the front of the boat. As they ran, one of the phantoms roared towards them.

"Don't let them touch you, or you're dead," Jenny shouted. She fired her pink sonic screwdriver at the wake ghost. It screeched and split itself down the middle and into tiny flecks until it dispersed into the air.

"What happened?" said Clara as Jenny turned off her sonic.

"I made it vanish," said Jenny. "The sonic made it evaporate and disperse. That's the only weapon I could think of for killing a phantom. They're like clouds, only they're more transparent."

"Jenny! Clara!" someone shouted overhead.

"That's the Doctor," Jenny said. "We better hurry."

* * *

The steamboat rocked. Water sprayed. Both Time Lords had no time to be seasick, especially with a plan like theirs.

"Ready, chin boy?" said John Smith.

"Yes," said the Doctor on the other side. "Ready, eyebrows?"

"And waiting."

Out the corner of his eye, the Doctor found Clara and Jenny running toward him. "Clara! Jenny!" he cried. "About time you got here!"

They stopped running when they arrived as Jenny rested her hands on her legs to catch her breath. As soon as her breath caught up with her, she said, "Hello dads. Missed me?"

"You weren't gone that long," said John Smith. "Last time I saw you was just a few minutes ago."

"Oh, stop it, gramps," said the Doctor before turning to Jenny. "When do I not miss you?"

Clara cleared her throat and said, "Er, Doctor? Can you tell me why the two of you are standing back to back against a pole?"

"No time to get into details, Clara," John said. "The short version is we're stuck."

"Like Jenny's bubblegum stuck behind her ear," the Doctor said.

"Now you're being grotesque."

"Chewing gum is disgusting! Have you ever seen Clara's classroom desks littered with the stuff?"

"I'm trying not to think about it."

"Boys, enough!" Clara shouted. "Are you going to explain what is happening right now?"

John Smith cleared his throat and said, "The vortex is opening again. This time, it'll be enough to swallow the entire state of Louisiana. If we don't do something quickly, the time bubble will swallow the entire planet, filling it with rain, wind, and darkness."

"So have a plan, yeah?" Clara said, crossing her arms. "What's the plan?"

"First, Jenny," the Doctor said. "You'll need your screwdriver. Clara, you'll have to use mine. It's in my pocket, though I can't reach it at the moment."

Clara reached for the Doctor's pocket and took his sonic screwdriver. "Why do we need two sonic screwdrivers?" she asked.

"That's part of the plan," John said. "Though you can't really use mine as well because the paradoxes of both screwdrivers don't… mesh well. So Jenny, you'll have to use yours with the Doctor's."

"Good call," said Jenny, taking her pink sonic screwdriver out of her handbag. "So, plan?"

"Yes, and it's a little sticky…" John said.

"Is that the best joke you can give?" the Doctor whined. "Blimey, it's like being squashed next to that Sontaran comedian I wished I've never heard of."

"Or that Gary Shandling, rest his soul," John said. He then turned his attention to the thunder and lightning roaring above them. Then it dawned. "Wait, where's P.E. teacher?"

"P.E. teacher?" said Jenny. "What P.E. teacher?"

"Louis is not a P.E. teacher," said Clara. "He's a musician. I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Anyway, what you have to do right now is melt the witch who's done this," the Doctor said. "It should be possible with the two of you together."

"You may need to find Louis and the other girl to help you," John said. "If you do this exactly as I tell you, we may have a chance."

"And get you un-stuck?" said Jenny.

"All in good time, Jenny," the Doctor said. "It's not like the paradoxes of my time stream have stuck to each other like Acme."

The Doctor smiled as Jenny groaned. "Oh, you're really full of yourself, ain'tcha? What is that, silly stick?"

Clara only looked confused. "So… plan?"

"All right, the both of you, I need your attention," said John Smith. Jenny ceased laughing and drew her attention to the Scottish man in the ruined navy suit, she and Clara taking a step toward him before he continued. "This plan to melt the witch queen is more complicated than the both of your lives at this point in time, so I'm only going to say this _once_. The Doctor and I have _two_ plans… Listen _carefully_."


	14. Night Twelve: Gabriel's Last Tune pt1

Night Twelve

Gabriel's Last Tune

_The thing about these ghosts is that they're made with water vapor and dionytrogen, gases that cause hallucinations in Time Lords and humans. The gas emits a telepathic toxin that makes your hallucinations become reality in a way. The most important part is to think positive and remember what your life is right now. They feed off your thoughts. Don't let them. _

Clara and Jenny made their way to the engine room where the steam stacks were. They had to go deep into the bottom of the steamboat to get there, with difficulty coming from the aliens screeching through the sky.

_This boat runs entirely on water, which makes steam. You need to use both sonic screwdrivers to allow the steam to turn on the ghosts and the portal. It should wipe them out, the hotter the temperature. _

Clara remembered Marcie gave her a bottle of Tabasco to take in her purse, though she thought she never needed it. She needed it now. Climbing to the first pipe where the steam was stored to run the engine, she unlatched the cap and took out the hot sauce from her handbag. She uncapped the bottle and poured that into the gigantic cylinder. She did the same for the second tall cylinder. Jenny then used both arms to open the hatch for the coal to shovel in more coal for the fire. She then climbed on top of the furnace and fired her sonic screwdriver at the stacks and the temperature and pressure gauges. After giving the last gauge a boost, she knelt down, kissed her hand, and touched it, leaving her mark. Clara then went to the control room and used the Doctor's screwdriver to force the levers forward until they broke so that the boat would go faster.

_The diversion is Louis and your lady friend. They should be in close range. As soon as you split up and find them, it'll be up to you to get back to the Tardis and wait for my signal. As soon as it's all done, close the doors and fire up the helmic regulator and the hand brake. Easy. _

"I'll get to the Tardis, you find Louis and Marcie," Jenny said to Clara. "I'll lure the phantoms towards me while you go the other direction to find them."

"Sure thing," said Clara.

But before they could go, Jenny tapped Clara on the shoulder and said, "Wait." She went into her handbag and tossed a silver wrapper to her. It was an Air Heads candy bar, White Mystery flavor. "For the fat lady," she said as she put a finger to her nose. "Very important, fat lady."

Clara nodded her head and smiled. And they were both gone.

Jenny made her way through the outer walkway of the boat, climbing the staircase and heading up to the front deck. She whistled a familiar tune with her hands behind her back, holding her screwdriver and twisting it. Then she broke into a silent song as the phantoms came closer.

"Anything you want to, do it… Want to change the world? There's nothing to it… There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination…"

The phantoms came nearer, but dissipated when Jenny hit them with her screwdriver one by one, without flinching or looking.

"Living there you'll be free… if you truly wish to be…"

Upon arriving at the Tardis, she snapped her fingers and the doors flung open. She swung her hips and muttered, "Cha-cha," as she sauntered in and slammed the doors shut behind her.

* * *

When Clara found Louis, he was in one of the staterooms. As soon as she flung the door open, he ran out and held her in his arms. She was lucky to be alive.

"Babes! You're safe," Louis breathed.

Clara pulled away and said, "How did you get up here? Where's Marcie?"

"I don't know where she got off to," he said, his hands trembling. They were cold against Clara's hands. "We all slipped out of the box and everything went crazy."

"We should stay together and find her," Clara said, taking Louis by the hand and pulling him down the hallway.

Suddenly, a cloud formed below the stern side of the boat where the water wheels turned. Below the cloud, Marcie was hovering over the wheel, her body glowing in red light.

"Oh no," Clara whispered.

Marcie leaned her head back as the red cloud bore the face of the Voodoo Queen. It turned to Clara and quipped, "One breath is all it takes. Time to join your friends on the other side."

Clara nearly jumped out of her skin and screamed, "RUN!"

They took off running hand in hand as the cloud followed them. As they ran, Clara pointed the Doctor's screwdriver at the cloud behind them and fired, but the cloud refused to shrink. She tapped it against her hand again and fired it. It wasn't working.

"Don't let them touch you," she shouted. But the cloud got close enough to grab her by the ankle until Louis pulled her around the corner and down the steps.

The river waters thrashed when the portal opened wider. The Doctors gazed up, wondering if Clara had finished the job. "Clara!" the Eleventh Doctor called. "Is it done?"

Louis pulled Clara to the Tardis until a pink phantom grasped her by the ankle, pulling her down and dragging her. She screamed. Louis propped the door open and grabbed Clara by the wrist. He pulled, but the phantom had a sharp, firm grip. The winds howled and thrashed against everything, messing with Clara's hair and messing with Louis's grip on her.

"Come on, babes!" Louis shouted. "Stay with me!"

"Let go!" Clara shouted. "Trust me!"

"I can't let you go!" returned Louis. "We've gotta get you out of here!"

"Just this once!" she shot back. "I can do this! Just close the door! Do you trust me?"

Louis hesitated, keeping a firm grip on her. "Yes."

"Then let me go."

Slowly, Louis let his hands slip. When he let go of Clara, she fired the screwdriver and fell backwards towards the portal ahead of them. But in just a single moment, she grabbed hold of John Smith, embracing him tightly as the phantom lost its grip on her and disappeared.

The Tardis doors slammed shut. The cloister bells rang. The wheezing noise started. Out of the steam smoke stacks on top of the boat came the red gusts that billowed out and toward the portal. The boat increased in speed. As soon as the Voodoo Queen materialized before the portal to open the floodgates, the boat exploded into fire and smoke. And when the fire and smoke met the portal, the fabric of the sky burst into flame and the portal snapped itself shut.


	15. Night Twelve: Gabriel's Last Tune pt2

The sun was starting to rise for the next day out along the outskirts of the French Quarter. The streets were still quiet and still as the sleepy town allowed the hushed tone of the sunrise come. The clouds and fog had completely gone from the sky. The haze of the sky gave off a bright orange almost pink glow.

Then at last, the silence was broken with a wheezing noise coming from outside a quaint little café with ferns growing outside the windowsills. When it stopped, all was quiet again until the doors opened and both Louis and Clara fell out onto the pavement.

Clara was resting on his chest when she said, "How did that happen?"

"Beats me," said Louis. "I thought you knew a way out of that one."

When they both got up and shuffled out of the Tardis, John Smith stepped out and said, "Actually she didn't. I reprogrammed the Tardis to hone in on both sonics, the Doctor's and mine, trap the three of us and pull us back in as it was dematerializing. And as you can see…" He brushed off his sleeves. "The bonds sticking the two of us together was only a psychic meld. So no harm done. You may need to take this, though."

He tossed a vial to Clara. She caught it and said, "What's this?"

"Dionytrogen antidote," John Smith said. "It should take care of everything else and restore to factory settings in your brain. No damage and no side effects. It should taste like… radishes. Though I've never liked radishes. "

Clara took a swig of the liquid in the vial and sputtered. "Thanks."

John Smith took a few more steps toward them. "So, Louis, I'm guessing you'll be returning to the same old life?"

"Actually, I was thinking of travelling with you," Louis said before he turned to Clara. "That is, if you'll have me."

Clara looked away for a second and then back into the musician's eyes. There was some sadness and remorse behind the look on her face. She took off his engagement ring and handed it back to him. "I'm sorry, Louis. I can't marry you. I'm from the future and I'm only here visiting. I wish I could let you stay, but I can't."

"And think of all the songs you're going to write," John said with a beat, doing a little hop closer to him. "You're a wonderful musician! Someday, you'll look back on this and think, what an adventure I had! I'm sure there'll be more."

Louis took a step back. "Well, I don't know if you knows this, but people don't want to listen to anything Creole or anything from my side of town."

"Sure they do!" John chimed. "Think about it like this. Clara gave you a lot of inspiration. You've heard about the West End of London, where Clara's probably from…"

"I'm from Blackpool," Clara said.

John Smith ignored her and continued. "You can call your first song 'West End Blues'. Though I think you should probably introduce the song with some mad trumpet playing before you start the melody."

"I ain't got no melody," Louis said. "King Oliver says…"

"Who cares what he thinks?" said John. "You've got the greatest voice in the world. I'm sure his perceptions of you will change soon enough. And much, much later when you're older, you'll be singing about how wonderful this place is. Green trees! Red roses! Blue skies! You can have it all. Think about happier things. I know it's hard for you, but I assure you. You are the bravest soul in the world. Just remember the way you smile."

"For the whole world smiles with you," Louis said. "I get it. You know somethin'? You a'ight, Doc. You a'ight. Just keep smilin'."

Then softly, coming from the doors of the Tardis was someone playing a trumpet. It started off blaring a few notes before ascending upwards into a great big high note, before descending in trills of off-tempo notes and the slow melody started.

"Who does this song?" Louis asked.

"Like I said, you can have it," said the old man, who knew the song was by Armstrong himself. "You're going to write part of that song, not long from now. 'Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five' has a nice ring to it. You can call the song West End Blues if you like."

"Doc, you surprise me so much I don't knows what to say," he said. Looking back at the horizon behind him, remembering that he dropped his trumpet in the water when they landed, he added, "But I probably needs a new horn maybe."

"You'll get one before Christmas, don't worry," the hermit said as he opened the doors. But when he looked upon his console, he gave a shocked look as to who was dancing in his blue telephone box.

There was Jenny, showing the Eleventh Doctor how to dance.

"Slow, slow, quick-quick," she repeated. "Slow, slow, quick-quick, slow, slow, quick-quick, and turn… quick-quick, slow…"

As the Doctor spun her around again, he added, "I think I'm getting the hang of this."

"Hush now," said Jenny. "I need to concentrate. Keep your hand on my shoulder. Slow, slow…"

"I'm just making sure I don't hurt your feet because either I'm too tall or you're too short."

"Shush! Eyes on me, bow tie."

The Twelfth Doctor cleared his throat. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything."

The two of them stopped dancing to look at the three of them entering their little spaceship. Louis eyed the place as if he was dreaming. "I know, I know," the Twelfth Doctor uttered. "It's bigger on the inside, Louis, I knew what you were about to say. Clara's used to it, though, so you can't say anything bad about my ship."

The Eleventh Doctor scoffed and left his daughter's side to come eye to eye with Twelve. "Oi! It's _my_ ship! Yours is parked on the other end of the alley!"

"So you keep saying," said the Twelfth. "Lose the bow tie while you're at it."

"Never gonna happen, old man," said the Eleventh, straightening his tie.

Jenny cleared her throat and said, "Anyway, is anyone going to dance with me?"

She clapped her hands and the next song that played was another song Louis would soon record in the next thirty-five years, "Canal Street Blues". To Louis and Clara, it sounded like a traditional party or parade in New Orleans, everyone happy and high. The whole band was doing their own thing, the trumpet playing the melody, the corresponding trombone doing a low-key harmony, the drums tapping out the soft-shoe rhythm, and the clarinet wailing high in the rafters. Louis smiled at Jenny as she started snapping her fingers and swinging her hips. He went up to the console, pulled her close and started dancing with her. Then the Eleventh Doctor turned to Clara and offered her to dance as well. Soon enough, all four of them were dancing, except the Twelfth Doctor, who sighed and crossed his arms, leaning against the doorframe of the Tardis and snapping his fingers to keep time.

When the song ended, Louis and the Eleventh Doctor had already traded partners in the middle of the song. The Doctor dipped Jenny as she let out a squeal of delight and Louis ended the dancing interlude by letting Clara spin out of his hands and spin back into him. By that time, they were all out of breath from too much dancing. The Twelfth Doctor bowed his head in shame, putting his hand up against his face and smiling.

"That song was always too fast for me to dance to," the Twelfth said, stepping out of the doors.

"Possibly because you weren't as agile as you were before," said the Eleventh, bringing Jenny outside of the Tardis with Louis and Clara.

Jenny still giggled uncontrollably. "There always comes a time, dad, when you need to know how to dance," she said.

"I say he's danced enough," said Louis. "Look at all the color in his face!"

"Well, then, maybe we should start saying goodbye, just as I was getting to know me," Twelve said.

"Yes, well, goodbye, dear Scottie," said the Eleventh Doctor. "I must say I've certainly had the time of my lives, haven't we, Clara?"

"Have we?" said Clara, looking up at him. "I've only got one life and I'll say I've pretty much had enough." She turned to the old man in the blue suit jacket. "Goodbye… yes, it was lovely to meet you."

Eleven cut in and spoke for the old man. "Thank you, Clara, it's always been a pleasure."

Clara spun around to him in confusion. "What?"

"I'll explain later, get in the Tardis, Clara," the Eleventh Doctor said.

In that moment, she turned to the man in the navy blue jacket with red lining and took one hard look at him. She immediately knew it, though she hadn't traveled with him yet. This was the Twelfth Doctor, long before she would start travelling with him. "Oh."

The Twelfth Doctor took her hand. "Until we meet again, impossible girl."

Clara smiled at him. "I'm sure we will," she said, giving him a wink, hopeful to await the day she'd travel with him.

She then turned to the Eleventh Doctor and said, "You never explained to me why we came here first."

"The twenty-third, November, nineteen sixty-three," the Twelfth Doctor said. "The day I first came to this planet to save the Earth. It also happened to be a very special occasion, for I wanted to run away with a time machine."

"What now?" said Jenny, stepping out. She glanced at the two Doctors until it finally hit her. "Oh. Oh! Why didn't you tell me that before?"

"What are you Time Lords catching on that I can't?" said Clara. Then Jenny whispered in her ear the truth. Clara gasped. "Really?"

"I don't like to keep track of my age," the Twelfth Doctor said.

"I used to keep track, but not so much anymore," said the Eleventh. "But I do appreciate a good party now and then. But as a Time Lord, I tend to forget important dates and holidays, like Christmases and Easters, that I don't celebrate them much anymore."

"Doctor," said Clara.

"What?" said the Eleventh and Twelfth in unison.

"You didn't have to tell me that. I know."

"Know what?" Louis said.

Jenny went up to both Doctors, stood on her toes, and kissed each of them on the cheek. "Happy birthday, dad."

The Twelfth Doctor touched his cheek where she kissed him in a little bit of shock. "I don't kiss people, usually."

"I don't care," said the Eleventh. He picked her up as she yelped joyfully, grabbing her into a hug. "Thank you, Jenny! I'm going to miss you!"

As he put her down, she said, "I'll miss you too, chinny dad."

She turned and faced the Twelfth Doctor, who said, "I'm not a hugging person. And it's not my birthday."

Jenny looked at him, puzzled. Then he said, "Oh, fine," and pulled her in for a hug anyway. "Goodbye, Jenny the Stripe."

"I love you, dad," she replied.

"Love you too. Now hurry up before Missy catches on. Give my best to Lenny while you're at it."

"I will."

Jenny stepped back and reached inside her handbag. To Clara's surprise, it wasn't a time vortex manipulator for cheap time travel, it was a key chain. When she hit a button, there appeared a blue photo booth with a door instead of a curtain behind her. When she opened the door, it revealed a bigger-on-the-inside spaceship. Another Tardis! She stepped inside, closed the door, and let the same wheezing noise take off and disappeared before everyone.

Clara returned to the Eleventh Doctor, who said, "Well, Clara? Back to the Tardis? See you next Wednesday?"

Clara folded her arms and said, "I thought you were coming for Christmas dinner! I still can't bear to see you with that little Cyberman head you picked up."

The Twelfth Doctor bowed his head and chuckled. He knew where this was going.

"I told you, Handles is helping me find Gallifrey!" the Eleventh shot back. "I need all the time I can get."

The Twelfth Doctor raised his head and said, "Trust me, laddie, you want to see her for Christmas. You'll need her."

"No, believe me, I'm getting close," the Eleventh said. "I'll be back for Clara before the New Year."

"No you won't," the Twelfth said. "You won't make it in time. Take her with you and don't be afraid."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what I mean, little boy. You're prone to mistakes, you know that. Pretty soon you'll be stuck on Trenzalore with no one to talk to before you regenerate. And you'll make one last phone call. It better not be to me, that's all I'm going to say."

"But-" The Eleventh Doctor looked into the Twelfth's eyes and saw it. His time was nearly up. It was time for him to change soon. Time for him to head back to Trenzalore to grow old, die, and begin a new regeneration cycle. The time was coming soon and he needed Clara with him. He stood back and the smile ran away from his face. "Oh, dear."

"That's right, oh dear," Twelve said. Then he leaned in and whispered, "Did you think that I'd forget?"

He winked at the Eleventh Doctor and smiled at him for a split second.

Eleven straightened his bow tie and smiled. "No, you wouldn't," he said. By this time, Clara had been standing in the doorway of the Tardis, watching them without hearing their conversation. "I never forget, ever. Because I will always remember every day, every hour, and every second being who I am right now. I will always remember being the Doctor. You know that already."

The Eleventh Doctor stepped inside the Tardis with Clara, holding her hand for the last time, as the Tardis doors fell shut, and the wheezing noise began again. As the Tardis disappeared from view, the Twelfth Doctor's Tardis could be seen in it's place, as if revealing another box behind the curtain. Louis almost jumped back when he saw it reappear before him.

"Wait a minute," Louis said. "I thought there was two of them! You really a magician, aren't ya?"

The Doctor turned to Louis and said, "That's where everyone goes wrong. I'm just an idiot, a wanderer, helping people along as history goes."

"So you can get me out of New Orleans somehow?" Louis said.

"That, my friend, is something you'll have to do on your own," the Doctor said. "Don't worry. All in good time. One day, you'll come back here and won't mind it so much. But the good news is, you'll only be here for just one day. You'll be in New York and things will be better."

"How do you know that?"

"Give it a single year. One year, that's all I ask. Promise me you'll give it a year."

Louis sighed and shook his hand. "Agreed. Just drop in sometime, a'ight?"

"I think I might," the Doctor said. "Maybe."

Louis chuckled and walked away, into the outskirts of New Orleans, already turning over a new page in his life. As he walked away, the Doctor proudly stood back, admiring all that he'd done. Then he thought of Clara, and how much he missed her. If only he could return to her now.

But when he returned to his Tardis console and shut the doors, he realized he needed her, even though she would soon be gone from his life. He ventured out into the unknown, to a little planet where he'd run into a little boy named Davros, pleading with him to help save his life. He regretted that day, feeling ashamed of it all that he'd throw himself a huge party before going back again.

But it was ok. He was going to keep going. Because he was the Doctor. A lone wanderer in all of time and space to save those who asked for mercy. Always mercy. Never cruel or cowardly and always kind.

And he was free.

When he picked up his guitar, he thought of Louis, and thought of Clara. He thought of the man he used to be, through all eleven times he regenerated. He thought of all the pure pleasure it brought him, along with the pain.

So he played the blues, the only way he knew how, just as Louis showed him all that time ago.

I hear babies cry

I watch them grow

They'll learn much more than I'll ever know

And I think to myself

What a wonderful world…

THE END.


End file.
